THE HARDER SIDE OF SEARS : RENOVATION OF 1923 CATALOG HOME DRAWS ATTENTION OF TV'S BOB VILA.

Byline: Jenifer Hanrahan Daily News Staff Writer

Gavin and Michelle Langley knew the house was special the moment they stepped onto the gabled front porch.

Sure, they could hear a steady whoosh of cars from nearby freeways. Sure, all 1,080 square feet could best be described as a ``handyman's dream.''

But the scuffed hardwood floors, the ripples in the window panes, the sturdy fir cabinets, even the porcelain commode ``seemed to be telling a story,'' Gavin Langley said. ``We wanted to know what the story was.''

Turns out you can't judge a house by its shabby facade.

Their one-story bungalow, wedged between the 101 and 134 freeways in Studio City, has a past intertwined with an America on the move, a growing Los Angeles.

It's a Sears, Roebuck and Co. kit house, the kind do-it-yourselfers could put together by following the directions. Built in 1923, it's from the days when Americans could buy their home sweet home from a catalog.

Maybe the modest abode was nothing special back then. A kitchen, two bedrooms, living room, dining room and bath. No attic. No basement. A few extras, like the fancy glass doorknob and medicine cabinet over the sink.

But to the Langleys, their unassuming little box is a survivor. It came chugging through the American West by railroad, narrowly avoided being paved over by the Hollywood Freeway (101) and held its ground through more than one monster earthquake.

So when the Langleys got to fixing up their fixer-upper, they faced a challenge: to balance restoration and renovation, staying true to the house's history while making it a comfortable place to live.

``We wanted to maintain the integrity of the house but also give it a life for us,'' Gavin Langley said.

And if that's not enough, this tiny dwelling that came to Hollywood in a boxcar is about to make it big.

Bob Vila - whose top-rated PBS show ``This Old House'' helped transform home improvement from a chore into a national pastime and a hit sitcom - is going to make the house a star.

Vila will feature the renovation of the house on his syndicated television show, ``Home Again With Bob Vila.''

(It probably helps that Vila is a Sears spokesman.)

Special delivery

The story of the Langleys' house begins when Sears sold its first ``Modern Home'' in its spring 1908 general catalog. From baby carriages to wedding gowns to tombstones, Americans could mail-order just about anything from Sears.

Houses came with names like the Lexington, the Hampton, the Savoy, the Sheridan, the Starlight. Homebuyers could choose from two-story Colonials or split-levels, Craftsman bungalows, Queen Anne farm houses or Cape Cod cottages.

In 1908, prices ranged from $650 for three rooms to $2,500 for nine rooms.

By the mid-1930s, Sears had sold about 100,000 mail-order houses.

But Sears didn't maintain blueprints or early company records to trace where the houses landed.

``People call us all the time wanting us to verify if a residence is a Sears home, but we can't do it,'' said Vicki Cwiok, an administrative assistant who has worked for 18 years in the archives in the Sears Tower in Chicago.

Still, there are ways to be reasonably sure a house was manufactured by Sears. Homeowners can check for bath or hardware fixtures engraved with ``SR,'' mortgage records that list Sears as the original holder, or numbers marked on exposed rafters that correspond to blueprints.

The Langleys tried to find their house among the 477 models included in ``Houses by Mail: A Guide to Houses From Sears, Roebuck and Co.,'' but they still haven't found an exact match.

The Crescent comes closest. Identical window sizes, millwork, fixtures and floor space. Only the location of the dining room is different.

In 1923, the Crescent went for $1,900. The garage, called the Utility, added another $99.

``To the folks who like a touch of individuality with good taste. ... Seldom, indeed, do you find a more inviting front porch, hood supported by two graceful columns ...'' the ad promised.

Survivor gets a facelift

The Langleys' bungalow is done in the American Arts and Crafts style, a turn-of-the-century aesthetic movement that favored function over decoration, simplicity over ornament.

The folksy style that emphasized handcrafted designs was a reaction to the excessiveness of the Victorian era, reflecting a distrust of the Industrial Revolution and the increasing mechanization and impersonalization of society.

Then Sears gave the aesthetic a quintessentially American twist - it mass-produced it. A Sears house came complete: shingles, roofing, millwork, flooring, plaster, doors, windows, fixtures, even paint. Precut lumber before every garage had a Black and Decker.

The Langleys' house settled first at 335 N. Heliotrope Drive in Hollywood. But in 1929, construction of the Hollywood Freeway almost toppled it. More than 2,000 buildings were demolished to make way for the asphalt artery connecting downtown with the exploding San Fernando Valley.

But someone saved the house and moved it to a street just north of Ventura Boulevard, the Langleys learned by checking records at the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety.

History of a home

In its early years, the house had only one or two owners, maybe a young couple starting a family.

Then the Boyle family bought the house and held onto it for more than 66 years, eventually renting it to a succession of elderly women.

Michelle Langley's mother, Mary McDonnell, was the last tenant. She lived in the house for 13 years before her death.

``We bought it in memory of my mother,'' Michelle Langley said.

To the Langleys' delight, none of the previous owners had irreparably altered the house, structurally or cosmetically, with their personal brand of bad taste. Down to the doorknobs and drawer handles, this house hadn't changed much.

No walls had come down, no additions had been made, no orange carpet laid.

``A lot of homes we find usually have some unsafe modifications and some really abstract additions,'' Vila said. ``This one didn't.''

Still, it needed work. The wood of the front decorative gable had rotted. The house was badly in need of a roof and a new plumbing system.

Gavin, an architect, and Michelle, a ballet teacher, started planning.

``We made a wish list of everything we wanted to do,'' Michelle Langley said. ``Then we chose the things we could afford.''

They discovered a cathedral ceiling hidden by a dropped ceiling made of pressed newspaper in the living room. They tore up the linoleum in the kitchen and uncovered the original hardwood floors.

They wrote to Vila's production company in Boston and sent photographs and drawings detailing their plan, ``fully expecting they would say they weren't interested,'' Gavin Langley said.

On their own, the Langleys stripped the cabinets of thick coats of paint and refinished the wood. They scoured salvage yards to find light fixtures from the '20s that had long since disappeared.

For financial reasons, ``we're trying to do as much of it ourselves as we can,'' Michelle Langley said.

They hired a contractor, Cortney Lofton of Littlerock, Calif., to insulate, replaster and reframe the walls, reproduce the molding, repair the weight and pulley windows, lay down a new roof, put in a pool using slate, a material likely to have been used in the '20s, instead of tile or concrete, and add a back porch with French doors leading from the bedroom, a common feature of old-style bungalows.

The price tag: $110,000. Vila will only reimburse them for extra time it takes to do the job because of filming delays. The job should be finished by the end of April.

``A lot of people think they need something big and fancy and new,'' Gavin Langley said. ``But for us, this is the American dream.''

CAPTION(S):

9 Photos

Photo: (1--Cover--Color) Studio City bungalow shines in Bob Vila's spotlight

(2) ``A lot of homes we find usually have some unsafe modifications and some really abstract additions,'' says Vila, who is featuring the project on ``Home Again With Bob Vila.''

(3) Doing much of the work themselves, Gavin and Michelle scrape old paint off a cupboard.

John McCoy/Daily News

(4) The 1923 Sears bungalow still contains this original sink, which makes architect Gavin Langley a happy homeowner.

(5) Ballet teacher Michelle Gavin with another original item - the fold-down ironing board.

(6) `A lot of people think they need something big and fancy and new. But for us, this is the American dream.'

Gavin Langley

with his wife, Michelle, on the porch of their 1923 Sears bungalow

Tina Gerson/Daily News

(7--8) Bob Vila films Gavin and Michelle Langley's Studio City home for his syndicated television show. The home, made from a Sears, Roebuck and Co. kit, is undergoing a major renovation. Above, an original built-in desk, which the Langleys are redoing.

John McCoy/Daily News

Tina Gerson/Daily News

(9) no caption (Sears, Roebuck and Co. kit house)