The Perfect $100,000 House: A Trip across America and Back in Pursuit of a Place to Call Home Book

A HOME OF ONE'S OWN has always been a cornerstone of the American dream, fulfilling like no other possession the desire for comfort, financial security, independence, and with a little luck, even a touch of distinctive character, or even beauty. But what we have come to regard as almost a national birthright has recently begun to elude more and more prospective homebuyers, as they find themselves either priced out an overheated real estate market or numbly standing before a series of cooker-cutter developments that lack both character and substance. Where housing is concerned, affordable and well-crafted rarely exist together. Or do they?

For years founding editor-in-chief of Dwell magazine and noted architecture and design critic Karrie Jacobs had been confronting this question both professionally and personally, and finally decided to see for herself whether it was possible to build the home of her own dreams for a reasonable sum. The Perfect $100,000 House is the story of that quest, a search that takes her from a two-week crash course in housebuilding in Vermont to a road trip of some 14,000 miles. In the course of her journey Jacobs encounters a group of intrepid and visionary architects and builders working in reclaimed urban areas and rural byways to revolutionize the way Americans thinks about homes, about construction techniques, and about the very idea of community. In Perryville, Missouri, she finds an austerely elegant glass and galvanized aluminum box that can be assembled from a kit. On Fox Island, Washington, she falls in love with an idiosyncratically modern, zebra-striped shed that is a brilliant assembly of prefab components; in Taos, New Mexico, she ponders whether she could really settle down in a hobbity structure made of recycled automobile tires and pressed earth; and in Houston finds herself gratefully seduced by the vernacular charms of a nuevo-retro shotgun house.

By her trip's end Jacobs, and her readers, have not only had a practical and sobering education in the economics, aesthetics, and politics of homebuilding, but have been spurred to challenge their own deeply held beliefs about what constitutes an ideal home. For anyone contemplating purchasing or building a house, or simply indulging their own dreams of doing so, The Perfect $100,000 House is a compelling and inspiring demonstration that we can live in homes that are sensible, modest, and beautiful.