Pittsburg, PA
Nearly a Century Old, This Sears House Kit Home in Fineview is Still Fine | Pittsburgh Magazine
Built in 1928, the hillside home is packed with original millwork, charming details and loads of storage.
PHOTOS BY DONNELLY MEDIA, LLC
When Alena Taylor Keefe was in elementary school, her family moved to 2035 Biggs Ave. in Pittsburgh’s Fineview neighborhood.
The year was 1975, and she recalls being delighted with the Craftsman-style home built from a Sears housing kit that her family would call theirs for the next 50 years.
“It’s a place that you can call home,” she says. “Some places you can’t really say that about, but it’s just such a great family home.”
Built in 1928, the house has three bedrooms and one bathroom packed into 1,500 square feet.
“I grump about the fact that there’s only one bathroom and the kitchen is small because I love to cook, but I still made it work for many family suppers,” Keefe says. “We hosted holiday dinners where we extended the dining table into the living room to accommodate everybody. It was just home.”
The first floor of the home has that small, yet functional kitchen, a nicely sized dining room and a large living room that spans the front of the home. Keefe warmly recalls coming down the front staircase on Christmas mornings and posing in formal dresses beside the steps before school dances. She says her family also enjoyed the long front porch that runs along the living room.
“My dad would come out and read the newspaper, and I’d be on the swing with my mom while she worked on her crochet,” she says.
On the second floor, three equally sized bedrooms share a hallway bathroom with double sinks. A set of pull-down stairs leads to ample storage under the eaves.
Now in their 80s, Keefe’s parents have moved to a maintenance-free home near Keefe’s current home in Beaver County, so they can continue to enjoy family dinners together, but without the responsibility of home ownership.
While Keefe is wistful about selling the home her parents carefully loved for half a century, she is certain a new buyer will recognize its charm and value.
“So much has never been touched,” she says. “There is original woodwork, an original fireplace that still has a coal chute to the outside and a lovely built-in China cabinet in the dining room.”
Keefe also touts the home’s plentiful storage; there’s a clean, dry basement, attic storage and a detached two-car garage with a lower level could be space for a workshop, studio or general storage.
Keefe notes the roof was replaced in the last decade; there also were updates to the HVAC, including adding air conditioning, and the family replaced the upstairs flooring in preparation to sell the carefully maintained home.
The house is now listed by Brian Larson of Howard Hanna for $245,000. He says it checks all the right boxes for a first-time homebuyer — or anyone shopping for a clean, well-maintained home.
“This is a home that has clearly been loved and lived in with care,” says Larson. “Over the years, attention has been given to maintaining and improving the property in a way that supports comfortable, everyday living. While no home of this era is ever ‘finished,’ per se, the overall condition reflects consistent stewardship rather than deferred maintenance.”
Larson says buyers should not have issues with financing for this home, including loans through the Federal Housing Administration or other specialized lending programs. Priced right around the city’s median home price, Larson encourages shoppers to check it out.
“Many first-time buyer programs are available that may offer down payment assistance and competitive interest rates, helping make homeownership more attainable for qualified buyers,” he says.
Larson adds that he loves the sun-soaked room that runs along the front of the home, as well as the wide front porch and the property’s proximity to Fineview Park.
“Fineview is also known as one of the best vantage points in the city for fireworks and skyline views,” he adds. “With convenient bus access and an easy commute to Downtown, the neighborhood offers a unique blend of tranquility, accessibility and city connection.”
Keefe says that while the neighbors have changed over the course of 50 years, her family has always been thankful for the close-knit Fineview community.
“There are some chickens running loose, but everybody up there is so kind,” she says with a laugh. “The mailman lives up on the corner; everybody knows everybody. It’s just so nice.”
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Pittsburg, PA
Pittsburgh’s air quality considered “unhealthy for everyone” on Friday due to wildfire smoke
The air quality will remain poor today. Officially, the air quality will be in the “very unhealthy” to “hazardous” range.
Friday’s forecast and air quality warnings
How hazardous are things? Wildfire smoke, like what we are dealing with today, really gives you a double whammy when it comes to impacting your health. The first is that you may notice when talking about air quality that we label it with a number, and then we put behind it PM2.5 or maybe 10.
The 2.5 is important because it is talking about the size of the particles that we are describing as parts per million. The unit for 2.5 is microns. 1 micron is the same as 0.00003937 inches or 0.001 mm. So 2.5 microns is around a fourth the width of a single wool fiber or around 1/7th the width of a human hair. It’s tiny and grating.
It’s small enough to get deep into your lungs but hard enough to irritate, like very fine sandpaper. For those with respiratory issues already in place, this increased irritation causes shortness of breath and frequent coughing spells. Not good.
The good news is that our air quality will rapidly improve overnight, with us returning to more normal air quality on Saturday morning. The bad news is that another plume of smoke is expected to roll in on Sunday, but that plume is not expected to be as bad as this current one.
Getting to today’s forecast, it is going to be hot with highs in the mid-80s today. There will be a haze sitting over the city all day long. I have noon temperatures near 80 degrees with light winds of around 5 mph.
Kennywood and Sandcastle close due to air quality
Both Kennywood and Sandcastle announced on Friday morning that the parks will be closed due to the air quality alert issued by the Pa. Department of Environmental Protection.
According to both parks, patrons who purchased tickets for July 17 will be valid on one operating day throughout the rest of the season.
A Westmoreland County family wants to warn others after they said they found a large void beneath the garage in their house built by Ryan Homes.
“More than anything, we just want folks to know that there is potential that other homes could be built like this and just to be aware,” said homeowner Nicole Holderfield.
Beneath their seemingly normal front-facing two-car garage in the Altman Farms neighborhood in North Huntingdon is a lot of dead space that the Holderfield family just found out about. They said having a secret room is not as cool as it sounds when you realize the structural integrity of the 30-year-old home is at risk.
“I hate to say shocking, but it’s not something that we really wanted to be the first one on the street to find out,” Holderfield said.
Holderfield said there are leftover cinder blocks and even a Lowe’s bucket down there.
“You can actually stand all the way down here on this side, a lot of backfill, and then we did see it was weatherproofed on some of the walls,” Holderfield said.
This all started because Holderfield wanted to fix the growing number of large cracks popping up across her garage floor.
“We were starting the cosmetic fix, and our contractor was here. And with a sledgehammer, he wanted to see what he was working with, so he simply pounded down the sledgehammer,” Holderfield said.
The large void directly underneath the garage is not accessible from their finished basement. Only one wall appears to be weatherproofed, so the family believes moisture rusted away the single support column and the steel rebar attempting to carry the weight of the entire two-car garage.
“A couple different companies did stop by, and they were in awe of what they found. Even the North Huntingdon inspector came out, took a look, and it was not something he was familiar with seeing,” said Holderfield.
That inspector encouraged the family to hire a structural engineer. They did, and received a report that concluded the issue was the result of “poor workmanship and faulty construction,” Holderfield said.
The family’s homeowner’s insurance denied the claim, saying defects from faulty construction are excluded from coverage.
“Knowing that we were parking our cars in here up until we found this problem — we have children and animals, and knowing that a catastrophe could come, I think that’s our biggest concern,” Holderfield said.
That’s why the family called the builder, Ryan Homes, and alerted all of their neighbors with similar builds and floorplans.
“They really just took a look and took pictures. When we did speak to the one gentleman at Ryan Homes, he said this was 30 years ago, there were different laws back then,” Holderfield said.
KDKA Investigates reached out to Ryan Homes for comment to ask if building these dead spaces is still its practice. And if so, should other homeowners who live in Ryan Homes inspect further?
Ryan Homes said they do not comment on news stories.
In an update on Thursday, the Holderfields told KDKA Ryan Homes reached out and said it’s willing to work with them on this, share the cost of the fix, and manage the project to ensure it is fixed as they would expect.
The family feels that’s a valid attempt to make it right.
KDKA Investigates talked to a Cranberry homeowner who also lives in a Ryan Home built around the same time. She sent photos showing the wet tire marks where her car drove over and broke through the concrete last year. When the garage floor failed, she said it revealed a 9-foot void. She said it took four triaxle trucks of fill and $20,000 to fix.
Holderfield says that makes her wonder who else could find this.
“I would love people to be held accountable, but I also understand the laws and that we could potentially be out of the warranty period is what they say. I do wish we could have them stand behind their work or help us get this fixed,” Holderfield said.
More than anything, the Holderfield family says it wants people to know there is potential that other homes could be built like this and to be aware.
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