house history: How Not to Renovate Your Historically Significant Home - 12/19/11 05:18 PM
Seeing the house in person was a bit like an encounter with a vampire: A once charming creature, full of life, adventures and stories, had turned into a bloodless, lifeless shell, generic, functional, and ... dead.
Not that I ever have encountered a vampire, but you will get my point here very soon.
For the past few weeks, I have been scrutinizing new listings in our area--in particular, houses built in the 1920s--for their kit home potential. Imagine my excitement last week when I came across a 1923 Sears "Fullerton" that's for sale right now--in a NE Washington D.C. neighborhood near … (9 comments)

house history: When Men Were Still Handy, Part II - 12/12/11 01:04 PM
Well, turns out that--at least in Washington--the average middle class guy in the early 20th century might not have known that much more about house building after all. But we'll get to that later.
Yesterday, I promised more on kit homes. Here we go.
The next amazing discovery I made when I was browsing all kinds of libraries and websites to find out more about the other big pre-cut/catalog companies. (Sears, Roebuck and Co. has not only been the most written about, most well-known and largest in numbers of units sold; the term "Sears home" has also become more or less … (10 comments)

house history: When Men Were Still Handy - 12/10/11 10:07 AM
Original Source: The House In The Post
  1917 Sears mail order bungalow in Washington DC's Shepherd Park neighborhood. Photo: Piers Lamb/Evers & Co.
Last week, my business partner, Marcie Sandalow, and I had a listing appointment at a great old house. The owner mentioned it had been a mail order home, not from the Sears catalog but rather from another, a little less well-known kit company.
That was a neat little fact because there is a growing fan base for these homes. There are dozens of them hidden in Washington’s old “streetcar suburbs” –such as Chevy Chase, Cleveland Park, the … (15 comments)

house history: Mansion Murder Mystery - 08/30/10 04:29 AM
My jaw dropped when I started reading. This was not what I had in mind when I was looking for some cool old stories or trivia around the house.
I had just come back from a listing appointment with smart and pleasant sellers. The “subject” was an old house, and--as always—it tickled my curiosity. DC is an old town with lots of history, and many of the homes have seen fascinating events and/or have had fascinating owners. As buyers and sellers alike love to learn about the history of their houses, I often go through a variety of sources—picture archives, newspaper … (9 comments)