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Paul Douglass

Paul Douglass

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5,245
Location
S E Washington State
Has anyone here ever heard of "CAP Homes"? The way I built my home in 1980. It is, in today's world, a "kit" home. I did my home that way. still living in it that way in 1980. Three thousand square feet, You got a catalog from the company, Picked out your choice of designs, made the modifications you desired, and ordered it. The "kit" included everything. All building materials, all finishing materials, EVERYTHING, including a three-ring binder of instructions, the plumbing, wiring, and every phase of the home. I still use it as reference. It also included having the house framed and all exterior sheeting, windows, and doors put up. So you could have a locked-up unit. Ordered mine, and I contracted the foundation to be done. When done, I scheduled the first shipment of material to be delivered. The second shipment included all the finishing things. sheetrock, cabinets toilet, sinks, carpet, and other flooring, etc. It included everything to build an enclosed house, plus internal framing which they furnished the people to do that. Plus, some other things to get me going. Then, it was mine to contract out what I wanted to and do myself what I wanted. The only pressure on me was getting it done in 9 months because that was all the longer I could get a construction loan. Had to get it done so I could qualify for a mortgage loan. I started this project with the encouragement of my father, a master carpenter, electrician, and plumber. What to worry about. Then, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. So I was on my own. But I did it with the help of my brother-in-law. He helped me all the way. His experience was in Habitat for Humanity. He has helped build more HFH houses than anyone else in our community. So, with his help, I got through it. When I got my permit to occupy. I broke down and cried like a baby. 9 hard month spending every time from work working on our house, while my dear wife took care of the kids and let me have at it.

There several CAP homes around my area. All still standing. The material provided were first rate. I had invested in my home, including well, septic tank, and every thing to have completed. I mean all nails, screws, flooring it all $50,000 lawn. I did contract out have the taping and texturing of the walls . I had a highschool buddy that did it for his living. He did it all in two days, it would have taken me a week or more and not nearly as good a job.
 
I haven't heard of CAP Homes, but know a few people who've built log cabins from kits. Different type of project and a different scale in size, but still a kit nonetheless. Yours sounds like a nice home with a lot of literal sweat equity. :thumb:

And then there were Sears Roebuck mail-order houses, available between 1908 and 1940. There are still a few of them standing in NM.
 
CAP Homes decided to expand into Financing their homes. That was a bad decision, and put them out of business. My borther built one after seeing how mine went. CAP home went out of business while he was in the process of building. Lucky for him he had gotten far enough to have received all his mateial. CAP never collected payment from him for the home.
 
In the surrounding KC area, there was a “Sears” distributor for kit homes.

They hired my dad for a few test builds. He had to keep track of the exact number of nails, that way they knew how many boxes to supply with the kits. Other tradesmen were hired the same for other phases doing the same to determine kit contents.

I know Menards still does the kits, as well as the “you design it” kits, which I used for the Guest cabin.

They sent a lot of materials that never got used, such as 16 gauge nails, as the framers used their nail guns. There was also products that weren’t of the quality they wanted to use, they still did, but certainly could have saved some money and time just having the contractor source it all.
 
Some years back I was wanting to build a geodesic dome to use it as gazebo, among all the info I gathered I found that in US there are several companies that sell them in kit form for houses, and they were big and beatiful. One of them was called Timberline Geodesics, their kis came with all the plans and pieces identifyied so that only assemblage was required.
I still have the idea of building it, not from those kits though.
 
I remember those geodesic dome houses. I was very interested in them and went to see a couple. They were certainly eye catching. Finishing the interior was a whole lot of work.and dry wall contractors that I approached pointed out how difficult the joints would be to finish and how much waste there would be in the dry wall. If I recall correctly one guy said he thought that it would take three times as much dry wall as an equivalently sized house.

The other thing that concerned me were the skylights. I was quite concerned about those plastic skylights clouding up and looking like crap.

By the way you can buy a geodesic dome kit with the metal pieces needed to create the joints and bolt them together accurately.
 
Toni Ciuraneta said:
Some years back I was wanting to build a geodesic dome to use it as gazebo, among all the info I gathered I found that in US there are several companies that sell them in kit form for houses, and they were big and beatiful. One of them was called Timberline Geodesics, their kis came with all the plans and pieces identifyied so that only assemblage was required.
I still have the idea of building it, not from those kits though.
Click to expand...
I still have the plans from them for a 40' dia dome.
 
I was fascinated by them, had all the catalogs and even went to tour a couple way back in my early house hunting days. Kind of glad I did not make that move for some of the reasons stated already. Plus, the novelty has worn off a bit and the reality of efficient space does not equal usable space has been driven home over the years as I see these houses on TV being refurbished or repaired. Great for efficiently enclosing large spaces as a single room, not so easy to divide and live in.
 
In my late teens a friend of mine and I were fascinated with geodesic dome homes, and we were convinced we'd build one in the mountains to live in. We had a book that explained the various angles that would need to be cut for each of the chords, and different methods for attaching the framework together. We spent hours designing floor plans and imagining living in a dome. Eventually we both got over our obsession with domes, but for a while it was a fun exercise in creativity to try to come up with usable floor plans in a round house.
 
I went into one that was being built nearby. It was all enclosed, but there was no interior framing yet. The builder told me to go stand in the middle of it and say something. I did, it was shockingly weird! My voice came back at me from all different directions. Kinda scared me.
 
Instead, what I did to get rid of the dome obssesion, I convinced my boss to make one as the company stand at a showroom, I made it out of corrugated board, designed all the pieces, and yes, getting those diedral angles right was quite a job, but I made all the triangles, that were shipped to the showrrom place, and we erected it in just 4 hours, no ladders, no scaffolding and only zip ties to maintain them together.
We built it from the top to bottom, assembling each level below the previous one and lifting the whole thing by hand, resting it on corrugated boxes.
If I remember well the total weight was about 80-90Kg. Here you can see some pics. It was a challenging project, but I do not know what was more pleasant, the whole thinking process, planning the erection and so forth or mounting it and being the sensation of the whole show. Even the furniture inside was made of corrugated board, and we used the same dome triangles to make the tables for people to sit and chat.
On the last pic you can see my team mates who helped in erecting it. We are so dressed up because after all the work we had to be there to deal with customers. It was year 2007. so 18 years ago! IMG_0417.JPGIMG_0418.JPGIMG_0423.JPGIMG_0448.JPGIMG_0455.JPG
 
Toni Ciuraneta said:
Instead, what I did to get rid of the dome obssesion, I convinced my boss to make one as the company stand at a showroom, I made it out of corrugated board, designed all the pieces, and yes, getting those diedral angles right was quite a job, but I made all the triangles, that were shipped to the showrrom place, and we erected it in just 4 hours, no ladders, no scaffolding and only zip ties to maintain them together.
We built it from the top to bottom, assembling each level below the previous one and lifting the whole thing by hand, resting it on corrugated boxes.
If I remember well the total weight was about 80-90Kg. Here you can see some pics. It was a challenging project, but I do not know what was more pleasant, the whole thinking process, planning the erection and so forth or mounting it and being the sensation of the whole show. Even the furniture inside was made of corrugated board, and we used the same dome triangles to make the tables for people to sit and chat.
On the last pic you can see my team mates who helped in erecting it. We are so dressed up because after all the work we had to be there to deal with customers. It was year 2007. so 18 years ago! View attachment 132740View attachment 132741View attachment 132742View attachment 132743View attachment 132744
Click to expand...
That is a very cool pavilion, Toni! I’m not surprised that your stand was the hit of the exhibition.
 
Toni Ciuraneta said:
Sorry Paul, I didn’t mean to hijack your thread, my apologies.
Click to expand...
I'm glad you did, I enjoyed reading about and seeing your project. I made a barn out of triangles once; It was not a dome, but sorta, almost. It was a fun project, having walls that were not straight up and down and no square corners led to unusable space as far as arranging things inside. But it worked, and the goats liked it.
 
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