Budget Breakdown: This Sears Kit Home in Houston Originally Cost $1,299. It Just Got a $368K Glow Up

Michelle White was recently at a neighbor’s dinner party when another guest—a visiting architect at Snøhetta—asked to see her house. Michelle and her husband, Haden Garrett, had spent more than a year renovating their Houston Heights residence, which dates back to the 1920s. They long suspected it was a Sears kit house—sold via catalogue from Sears, Roebuck and Co. and shipped to the buyer via railroad boxcars. Michelle’s neighbor, who lived in a Sears kit house almost identical to hers, had done the research, finding old advertisements that led everyone to believe their homes were the Josephine model: four rooms total, including two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a bathroom, retailing for $1,299, not including cement, brick, or plaster.

"I knew a bit about Sears houses and their history," says Michelle. "We live a block away from an old rail line that would go to the factories. The train would stop off here—this is the first suburb of Houston to the north of the city—and dump out houses."

The post-dinner tour revealed an updated residence, but one that didn’t stray too far from the spirit of the original. An addition doubles its square footage, a simple palette of white paint, oak flooring, and millwork blending with the details of the original house; the couple wanted to keep it from appearing ostentatious or overly designed (a rising problem in the neighborhood, they say.) "We loved the home and wanted to preserve it as much as possible and expand in a way that felt modest and in keeping with the neighborhood," Michelle says. "It was important to keep the proportions sensitive to the original profile."

Michelle and Haden purchased the 1,000-square-foot house from friends in 2011, shortly after getting married. Four years later, they had their son, Oliver. The house worked for the family when Oliver was younger, but as he grew, Michelle and Haden wanted more space. In 2016, the couple contacted Marisa Janusz of local firm Janusz Design about remodeling. The architect already knew the home, since she’d discussed a renovation with the previous owners. "It helps save a little money on design when the architect is already familiar with the house," says Janusz, whose fee totaled $30,000. It was 2020 when Michelle and Haden were finally ready to pull the trigger on the project, which Janusz describes as "a budget-friendly approach to adding square footage and building a calming space for the parents to escape at the end of the day."

Aside from moving the laundry out of a nook behind the kitchen, Janusz retained the footprint of the original kit home, adding square footage off the back of the kitchen. The new two-story addition has an informal family room that connects with the main living space, a utility and laundry room, a gallery space, a garage, and a primary suite upstairs.

By the time Haden and Michelle started their project, the pandemic had hit, and labor and materials costs were much higher than the initial estimate, adding about $150,000. "Construction costs were the biggest," Janusz says, "and even to cram that into the budget, we had to make some cost-cutting choices." Structural elements (the foundation, framing, siding, and insulation) ate nearly one-third of the budget, coming in at a little less than $100,000. Millwork, including built-in bookshelves and storage, was the second-largest cost at $38,240, with wall finishes and paint taking a close third at $37,000. "Modern millwork was important," says Michelle. "We also needed storage and wanted it to feel integrated. After the renovation, we weren’t going to have money left over for new furniture, so we needed to get as much aesthetically out of the build as possible. I told Marisa, no hardware [for cabinet pulls], just holes. We were looking for ways to save money and make it look simple but well-designed."

The kit house maintains its finishes, and aftermarket touches like shiplap walls that nod to the Houston suburb’s vernacular. Michelle’s inspiration images were mainly Scandinavian-inspired design, full of light wood, white walls, and clean lines. In the new addition, however, Michelle and Janusz used color—via paint, tile, and a bent-steel stair railing—wanting to create personality. Michelle, who’s the senior curator at a museum in the city, the Menil Collection, brought in a former colleague, exhibition designer Brooke Stroud, to consult on hues. "I wanted it to feel different through color," says Michelle. "It ended up being a cost-saving measure; because we knew we were painting, the type of wood we used in some places saved money."

They ended up with a primary color composition, choosing complementary tones that wouldn’t appear too much like an elementary school paint palette. Stroud painted large sheets of paper with various yellow and blue options, moving them around to test the interaction of light at different times of the day, keeping in mind that the walls would pick up hints of colors from their surrounds—from the oak floors to the trees outside the window. "We landed on that earthy yellow with green undertones because it would bring warmth and depth," Michelle says.

In the gallery, Farrow & Ball’s Hay, a light buttery-yellow tone, covers a floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall bookcase that opens to a large laundry room with a powder room off to one side. Color-wise, this room is the pièce de resistance—shades of blue abound. Michelle found an American Standard wall-mount sink at a salvage yard and Janusz color-matched paint for the powder room. She also custom-matched paint in the laundry room to the tile they chose, Blue Velvet by Fireclay Tile.

The couple saved further where they could with odds and ends, without sacrificing style. Michelle and Haden found a Rejuvenation bathtub (with a small scratch) on Nextdoor, spending $900 instead of the $10,000 it retails for; they repurposed wood from another deck Haden had built on the property to create one off the family room; and made use of Kohler hardware leftover from a project at Haden’s job, where he works as a facilities manager for a landscape design firm.

"We had a limited budget," Michelle says, "but I didn’t want it to feel like that when you look at the house. I like modernism and the idea of staying to materials. It’s refined but not pretentious, and now we each have a lot more space."

More Budget Breakdown:

Budget Breakdown: A Houston Family Nearly Doubles the Floor Plan of Their Beloved Bungalow for $391K

Budget Breakdown: With $89K, an Architect Expands His L.A. Home for Three Generations of Family

Project Credits:

Architect of Record: Janusz Design  / @janusz_design

General Contractor: Color Houses / @color_houses

Structural Engineer: CRAFT Structural / @craftstructural

Civil Engineer: Geoscience Engineering

Color Consultant: Brooke Stroud