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 think 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 pre-fab 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 she 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 demonstration that we can live in homes that are sensible, modest, and beautiful. Read Less