Historic kit houses hold an intense interest for old house lovers. The very idea introduces the possibility of getting so many questions about the origins of our homes answered. We all burn with curiosity to know: Who built it? Who designed it? When?
The fact that there were many companies manufacturing & shipping houses, & they stepped on one another’s designs all too frequently, makes this puzzle even more intriguing.
My article, DO I HAVE A KIT HOUSE? provides many references that are chock full of the most authoritative answers. I invite you to read it but I also offer you a tip-back-&-eat-popcorn experience in the form of videos that will impart some more cool knowledge.
The first couple videos are entertaining but the last one is highly illuminating, answering questions for me that I never knew I had about historic kit houses. The speaker, Devin Colman, state architectural historian at the Vermont Division for Historic Preservation, has obviously researched this topic well & he fleshes out the subject, enriching our understanding of the origin, success & decline of historic kit houses.
HISTORIC KIT HOUSES VIDEOS
Build your own Sears Kit Home – Life in America (8:01)
Recollection Road
Some good information & wonderful images.
Sears Houses– Kit Houses Sold by Sears, Roebuck, 1908-1940. From Two on Two, WBBM-TV Chicago. (6:58)
Beth Potter
Blueprints found in the attic! Neat! See inside some houses as they are now.
The Kit House! When houses were made by Sears (and others) and shipped for assembly. (8:12)
Brent Hull
I always love to hear Brent’s take on all things old house. He doesn’t dissappoint us here!
Bungalow in a Box: Kit Houses of the Early Twentieth Century (41:19)
Historic New England
Now you’ve hit the motherlode!
Devin Colman, state architectural historian at the Vermont Division for Historic Preservation speaks on historic kit houses. He explains the houses from various aspects giving you a full & fascinating education on the subject.
Few things are more at home in a bungalow than American art pottery. Its bright colors & luster bring cheer & light to a dark interior & add details that complement the simple lines of the more rustic Arts & Crafts furniture & Craftsman architectural details.
Anyone can collect art pottery. Mine was representative of the finest from the period, chipped & mended into affordability. There are plenty of imperfect pieces on the market & artfully arranged, you can emulate the most prestigious collection of any museum. (I won’t tell.)
Pottery can serve as an inspiration piece when you are starting from ground zero in decorating your home. Using the colors, the images, the shape, you can use them as a basis for choosing your furniture & your textiles.
LEARN HOW POTTERY CAN BE BEAUTIFUL IN YOUR BUNGALOW
American Art Pottery Secrets – Paul J. Katrich – 1 of 6(9:08)
Paul Katrich
Paul, himself a master potter, is passionate about historic pottery. This is the first of 6 videos in which he explains the origin & inspiration of Arts & Crafts pottery. He tells us about the aesthetic & technological developments that culminated in American A&C, then shows & tells us about the icons of the period.
I am not going to list every video in the full series. The parts are best viewed in order & when the first video is over, the second & those after will magically appear. You will experience some lovely examples of the American Movement!
THE IMPORTANCE OF WOMEN IN AMERICAN ART POTTERY
Women artists have been overlooked for centuries. By the end of the 19th Century, we began coming into our own. In addition to demanding to work, we were also clamoring for a place in the world. Recognition would come much later, but what we wanted was the opportunity to use our wits & talents to contribute to the human cause. For many women, gaining artistic skills meant that they had greater earning power & could feed their families.These videos tell of how the crafts, especially pottery allowed us to do this.
Overbeck Sisters’ Arts and Craft Pottery in Indiana – Fulfilling their creative potential (9:15)
Hoosier Woodcraft
Four sisters who believed that “borrowed art is bad art” & took inspiration from their own backyard.
This video is wonderful but plays so fast that the captions are difficult to read. I think they must have thought that it was too long & sped it up. I played it at 50% & enjoyed it very much!
Women, Art, and Social Change: The Newcomb Pottery Enterprise (1:32)
Gardiner Museum
An overview of the Smithsonian exhibition of ceramics. metalwork, textiles & images of the women at work.
Roger Ogden on Newcomb Pottery (2:31)
Craft in America
Roger Ogden, collector explains the femininity of New Orleans, the home of H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College (Tulane University’s former women’s college.)
Earth into Art — The Flowering of American Art Pottery (2:00)
Morse Museum
Lead by woman, America’s first success on the World’s art stage.
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Character is defined as all the qualities & features that make a person, groups of people, & places different from all others. In architecture, a character defining feature is any element, including the overall shape of the building, its materials, craftsmanship, decorative details, the interior space & any feature of it, as well as the individual aspects of its site & environment.
These videos focus on the character defining features that are typical inside a historic bungalow. They are the visual clues that the house is a bungalow & they differentiate it from other types of houses. They are the elements of the interior, that make a bungalow, a bungalow.
WHAT THE HECK IS A BUNGALOW, ANYWAY? focuses on exteriors, but in these videos, we are stepping through the door. You will notice that all the features, in & out are are in harmony.
LET’S GO INSIDE A HISTORIC BUNGALOW- OR THREE!
Moldings for an Arts and Crafts Home- Authentic details you need to understand. (12:00)
Brent Hull
Brent Hull, master craftsman, shows us the millwork that gives the bungalow its charm.
It is made from flax. My favorite fabric, made from the same plant, Linum usitatissimun, is linen, cool & elegant. And expensive. I’m always a fan of expensive.
Another ingredient of lino, pine resin takes me back to my six year old self, a tiny desert cowgirl, visiting Northern Arizona for the first time. After a life of looking at nothing but sand & cactus, the miles of tall pine forest I saw out of the windows of our car, were so, so green & so beautiful. The smell of the pine trees was enchanting. We pulled over at a rest stop & amidst all this towering wonder appeared a speckled fawn. Little girl heaven!
I grew up walking on linoleum, its smooth, clean coolness a welcome relief to my tender feet after running barefoot outside in the blazing sun. But it was Jane Powell’s book, LINOLEUM, that tipped me over the edge!
Lino can be passed over because, being made of natural materials, it costs more than vinyl, but the 2 products in no way compare as far as quality. For wet, high traffic areas, it cannot be surpassed in utility, healthfullness or charm. If you should be unfamiliar with the material, you’ll enjoy learning about it from these videos. If you’re a fan of old linoleum, you’ll find them entertaining & you might even learn a little bit.
Linoleum flooring is cool, actually (6:34)
Vox
Well, yeah!
Forbo Flooring Systems – Making linoleum is like cooking with natural ingredients (4:23)
Forbo Flooring Systems
The art of making Marmoleum. A fun & informative video!
Preserving 100-Year-Old Linoleum! (0:45)
Tenement Museum
Watch conservators cleaning & moving a 9’x12’ linoleum carpet.
See my other great collections of bungalow videos here!
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This article will cover residential illumination, with emphasis on bungalow lighting design basics. We’re going to look at types of lighting, as they could be applied to your unique home.
Many years ago, I did a survey of homeowners, seeking to understand what they considered to be their most important goals when decorating their homes. Soon after, a similar survey was conducted by the National Wood Flooring Association. Combining the results of these two surveys was wonderfully illuminating. (Pun intended.)
My survey results showed that people placed great value on beauty- highly prized as contributing to the quality of life, in the Arts & Crafts philosophy.
The second valued attribute was warmth, a visual manifestation of the human connection. We style our homes to be welcoming, to be safe havens of comfort & regeneration for our families & our friends. We want our homes to express us, to tell our individual stories. To help us connect.
The NWFA’s questioning uncovered the desire for design that is beautiful &, “evokes an emotional response.” Once again, the human factor, the wish to communicate, the desire to be heard & understood by others.
The warmth & beauty are built-in to the basic design our bungalows. No one (at least no one reading this article!) can deny their own, emotional response to the beautiful features of a historic bungalow.
So, how can we enhance the warmth, the emotion, the beauty in our homes? How do we make our living spaces express our individual voices more clearly & eloquently? How can our homes contribute more profoundly, more richly, to the lives of our beloved family members & our dear friends, in the simple design choices that we make?
Well, here’s how you can put a little more light in their lives!
AMBIENT LIGHTING IN YOUR BUNGALOW
The first to consider is general, or ambient (defined as existing or present on all sides: encompassing) lighting. This is the type that provides a general, uniform illumination for the entire area, allowing you to be oriented to the space & to move about safely. During the day, this is usually provided by windows.
Our bungalows tend to have deep porches & overhangs. We also often have large, mature trees which block the sun, so the illumination provided by our windows is not always bright. When many of our homes were built, we were not accustomed to the high wattage of today’s lighting & such illumination was sufficient. In fact, our houses were planned to be at their most attractive under the softer, more subtle glow of the lighting of the times. Window coverings typical to the period allowed this natural light in, providing layers of blockage for privacy & darkness.
Our fireplaces contribute to the ambient light. At one time, they would have provided a main source of visibility & warmth. The family would have crowded ’round after the sun set for warmth, comradery & entertainment, as well as illumination. (I cannot but compare a similar scene today- the family sitting around the big screen TV, in the cold glow of its blue light, each person mute & staring, some looking at their phones.)
The study of my Eagle Rock home, the Hare House had a small fireplace in addition to the main fireplace pictured above. The first resident, Alfred was both a minister, leading a congregation & an attorney with a thriving law practice in downtown Los Angeles. Though he had sisters who lived nearby, & both Alfred & Grace were very active in community affairs, they were childless & I imagine that, at times, she may have gotten lonely. I can easily picture Reverend Hare working at his desk there in the evening, perhaps with the added help of a gas lantern, to keep his dear Grace, company. Perhaps she knitted for one of her charities or aid groups?
TASK LIGHTING
Reading by the fire was a common pastime which we would find rather uncomfortable now. After our homes were wired for electricity, we eagerly employed lamps to read & write, to cook & wash dishes, to shave, to accomplish the many tasks inherent in daily living. I’m in hearty agreement! Should I need to read a set of tiny directions, or figure out what my cat has in his mouth, I want light & plenty of it.
Task lighting has different functions in various rooms. Probably most people don’t read in the living room these days, & for many, reading means looking at a lit screen, but some folks actually read print books & it’s handy to have light directed at it. Too bad that there’s no sheet music in this piano image because it’s such a perfect example of task lighting.
In the kitchen, task lighting is crucial for safety, hygiene & perfect caramelization. And for identifying which children are yours.
Let me be perfectly clear here about the use of can or recessed lights. Nope, no way, no how! IN BUNGALOW DETAILS: INTERIOR, Jane says,” DO NOT ALLOW RECESSED CAN LIGHTING INTO YOUR BUNGALOW!”
She obliviously felt that you needed to defend yourself from this type of lighting at all costs. Jane goes on to say, “There is nothing, NOTHING that screams ‘late twentieth century’ more than a recessed can light- I don’t care how many lighting designers tell you they are ‘unobtrusive…’
“There was no track lighting either, nor were there fancy Italian-design halogen lights suspended on wires.”
This is how we define the room. Against a dark background of wood, accent lighting creates atmosphere, forming multiple layers of depth. It draws the eye from one point of illumination to the next, create sculptural vignettes, enhancing the aesthetic & intimacy of the room.
Here we see a beautifully illuminated room. The lighting is layered- there is ambient lighting coming from the windows, complete with a cozy kitty, & table lamps which serve as task & accent lighting. You could easily read in the cushiony chairs beside them & they highlight the textile to the front, & the teddy on the window seat. Notice the signature acorn pulls of RAGSDALE, Mission Style Oak and Mica Lamps and Lighting, a modern master about whom you can read in Part 7.
The beauty of layering that it imparts a warm glow throughout the room. There are no abrupt changes that force your eye to readjust to different areas, yet, there is enough variety to keep it moving & interested.
This article is just the beginning! To become a master of bungalow lighting, keep reading!
Historic kit houses hold an intense interest for old house lovers. The very idea introduces the possibility of getting so many questions about the origins of our homes answered. We all burn with curiosity to know: Who built it? Who designed it? When?
Few things are more at home in a bungalow than American art pottery. Its bright colors & luster bring cheer & light to a dark interior & add details that complement the simple lines of the more rustic Arts & Crafts furniture & Craftsman architectural details.
Character is defined as all the qualities & features that make a person, groups of people, & places different from all others. In architecture, a character defining feature is any element, including the overall shape of the building, its materials, craftsmanship, decorative details, the interior space & any feature of it, as well as the individual aspects of its site & environment.
What’s not to love about historic linoleum?
This article will cover residential illumination, with emphasis on bungalow lighting design basics. We’re going to look at types of lighting, as they could be applied to your unique home.
Our fireplaces contribute to the ambient light. At one time, they would have provided a main source of visibility & warmth. The family would have crowded ’round after the sun set for warmth, comradery & entertainment, as well as illumination. (I cannot but compare a similar scene today- the family sitting around the big screen TV, in the cold glow of its blue light, each person mute & staring, some looking at their phones.)
Reading by the fire was a common pastime which we would find rather uncomfortable now. After our homes were wired for electricity, we eagerly employed lamps to read & write, to cook & wash dishes, to shave, to accomplish the many tasks inherent in daily living. I’m in hearty agreement! Should I need to read a set of tiny directions, or figure out what my cat has in his mouth, I want light & plenty of it.
Let me be perfectly clear here about the use of can or recessed lights. Nope, no way, no how! IN 
Part 1,