Houston designer Brett Zamore reviving kit homes

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When Sears started selling kit houses by mail in 1908, the companypromised that a man of average abilities could assemble any of themodels in the catalog  from a small gabled cottage to a roomyDutch colonial.
"People were much handier back then," said Rosemary Thornton,author of The Houses that Sears Built. "Prior to the mid-1920s, more than half of the country'spopulation lived on farms and most people had someone in theirfamily who had built their own home."
Exactly one century later, Houston architect Brett Zamore isbringing kit homes back  with some significant revisions. Zamore'skit houses tap into two global trends: sustainable living andprefabricated dwellings.
"I think there's an educated crowd out there that's interested inwell-designed homes made with green materials and energy-efficientsystems," Zamore, a graduate of Rice University School ofArchitecture, said recently.
Contrary to Sears' philosophy, Zamore assumes that the average manor woman of today has neither the desire nor the ability toassemble a home. That's why Zamore Homes will gather the materials,coordinate delivery and manage the construction process.
Unlike many prefabricated modular homes, which are assembledelsewhere and then loaded onto a truck to be shipped to theirdestination, Zamore's kits are put together on the lot.
"Each of my kits is like a predesigned custom home," he said."Every trade is brought to the site."
Sears kit homes usually arrived at the nearest train depot inboxcars that contained all 30,000 pieces needed for construction.By contrast, Zamore uses local suppliers when possible to saveshipping costs and minimize his company's carbon footprint. Thoseinclude Ikea, for cabinetry; Ferguson, for plumbing fixtures; and,in a hat-tip to history, Sears  for appliances.
Having the architect involved in the means and methods ofconstructing the home makes for a more efficient building process,said Joe Meppelink, a University of Houston lecturer inarchitecture.
"Typically, residential projects have a waste factor with materialsof 10 to 20 percent," Meppelink said. "You always see giantDumpsters full of good-size pieces of wood." On the street
Zamore is just finishing construction on three kit houses inHouston's West End, on Center near Thompson.
Two are his KIT02, a 1,250-square-foot space with two bedrooms andvaulted ceilings. Behind them sits the KIT00, a 400-square-footstudio the architect calls "the little casita ."
It is a typically random Houston block, with an old church on oneside, some 1920s and '30s bungalows on the other, and new townhomesacross the street. Yet the kit houses find harmony with theexisting architecture, even as they assert their independence. Thefront porches make them conversant with the bungalows, but pop-outsalong the length of each KIT02  one holds the powder room and theother holds the master bath  are a pleasant, contemporarysurprise.
In all, there are seven designs, in sizes that reach 2,200 squarefeet. But the KIT05 can grow as large as the homeowner wants, saysZamore, and all the kits can be tweaked to suit a buyer'spreference.
By contrast, Sears offered 447 designs over the years in a broadrange of prices, from about $600 to $6,000. According to Thornton,Sears kit homes were about 30 percent cheaper than traditionalstick-built homes.
Zamore's kit homes cost between $110 and $150 per square foot,which includes hard and soft construction costs but doesn't includethe price of the land. The KIT02 homes on Center, which sit on$80,000 lots, will hit the market just under $300,000.
"It's not cheap, but it's a much more affordable solution than acustom home," said Zamore, 37. "You're not paying the overhead ofarchitectural fees, and your engineer fees are much less. I'mmaking the construction process easier for the buyer."
Zamore is working in the margins of a small but healthy trend inthe housing market: prefabricated homes.
Prefab houses enjoyed multiple waves of interest throughout the20th century. In her book, Prefab, former Dwell magazine editor Allison Arieff notes thatprefab-housing proposals appeared in late 1930s, the period afterWorld War II, and then again in the late 1960s from architectsincluding Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius.
Current incarnations seem to fall into two categories: high-designand higher-cost homes created by architects and more-affordablemodular homes also known as single- and double-wides. In thestrictest terms, prefabricated homes are built and assembled in afactory and then shipped to the property. In a larger sense, theterm could also apply to homes with prefabricated parts that areassembled on site.
"There are a lot of different ways of doing it, but what they allhave in common is the thought and design that's put in upfront,"said Meppelink, director of design and building science forFramework Homes in Houston, which has created a prefab residencebased on traditional Gulf Coast architecture. "The great potentialin prefab is that the structures can become more complex andlarger. Waste will go down and quality will go up." Zamore's first kit houses
In recent years, Zamore's designs have caught the attention ofhigh-end shelter magazines and newspapers with national reach.
The architect has earned accolades for his artful rehabs of smallspaces and reinvention of two traditional Southern-style homes: theshotgun, a narrow space with rooms stacked one behind the other;and the dogtrot, a basic structure of two rooms separated by acovered breezeway.
Elements from both of these designs have found their way into hiskit houses. The center of each home features large French doors oneither side to encourage cross-ventilation and wooden blinds on abarn-door track to provide shade. Sizable overhangs on the frontand back porches also offer shade, indoors and out.
In 2005, Zamore designed a home for David Kaplan, a HoustonChronicle business reporter who wrote about the building process.Kaplan's house is a customized version of the KIT02 homes onCenter.
The following year, Mississippi native Karen Parker found herselfdrawn to one of Zamore's designs.
The mother of six lost her Biloxi home to Hurricane Katrina, whichleft 8 feet of standing water in its wake. Parker met Zamore afterhe responded to a call from Architecture for Humanity, a nonprofitorganization that was soliciting home designs for Biloxi's needyfamilies.
In August 2006, Zamore and 12 other architects traveled toMississippi to present their designs.
"While I was walking around looking at the different exhibits, Inoticed his house first," said Parker, whose children range in agefrom 10 to 21. "The other house designs didn't look normal forBiloxi, but Brett's house fit right in."
Zamore had proposed his KIT05, which has four bedrooms. Parkerselected Zamore's design and finally moved into her1,400-square-feet home this past January.
The new Parker family home is a far cry from a cramped FEMAtrailer. It's also "10 times nicer than the house we lost," Parkersaid.
Asked to list her favorite features, she hesitated. "Ooh, it'sgonna be hard, but it's got to be the large windows, the balconyand the porches."
Parker, 44, appreciates the fact that she can bring the outsideinto the heart of her home.
"I'm a country girl," she said. "I love open windows." Who will buy?
A hundred years ago, Sears kit-home buyers were a diverse group.
"They were working or middle class," Thornton said. "Single women.Immigrants. People who wanted to become homeowners but might havebeen a little cash-shy."
Today, with new construction going for $130 to $170 per squarefoot, the smaller size of Zamore's homes makes them less expensive,so they may be able to reach a wider market, said Tim Surratt, aRealtor with Greenwood King Properties.
"People are looking for smaller more affordable spaces inside theLoop," he said. "And when you're looking in the Heights, you'regoing to be looking at old wiring, old plumbing, no insulation, aplace where the foundation may need work. It's easier to maintainsomething new."
Zamore is also counting on an audience interested in efficiency ofspace and materials.
All of his modestly sized homes will feature a metal roof, atankless water heater, recycled hardwood floors andformaldehyde-free insulation. The homes are also raised about 3feet off the ground, which keeps a current of air flowingunderneath that helps them stay cool.
"It's weird," Zamore said. "The first thing people ask when theysee the kits is, 'Are they energy-efficient homes?' Peopleunderstand that the design emits a feeling of efficiency."
Mark Johnson, the client for whom Zamore is building the kit homeson Center, may have stumbled upon yet another group of potentialbuyers.
"I assumed that buyers would be young urban professionals whoappreciate good design and don't want to mess with a Heightsbungalow that needs a lot of repair," Johnson said. "But then I mettwo older women walking around the houses. They really loved them.They were baby boomers, and one was a widow who wants to stayinside the Loop and doesn't want to have to go up stairs."
For author Thornton, who spent years gathering information for herbook about Sears kit homes, the economy of space and sheerdurability of the structures were among their best qualities.Although it's impossible to know how many of the Sears kit homesare still standing, she said, her "wild guess" is about 90 percentof the 75,000 or so that were built.
Zamore's kit houses aim to marry similar features: high design,sustainable materials and efficiency.
"I'm trying to make a more modern home accessible to an everydayperson," Zamore said. "The kits are custom-built homes at anaffordable price." 'Solid as a rock'
Houston is home to a number of kit houses built in the first halfof the 20th century.