Jon and Kate's Plus 8's Crooked Houses Cost Thousands

As Jon and Kate Gosselin prepare to move into separate homes, their eight children spent most of last night's episode of "John and Kate Plus 8" playing in four new playhouses of their own, ironically dubbed Crooked Houses.

At a price tag of $7,000 apiece, the children's new houses were perhaps emblematic of the excesses the family has reaped as a result of itsTLC show, which chronicles the parents' trials raising a brood that includes sextuplets and twins.

Owned by Glen Halliday, 38, and Jeff Leighton, 34, Kids Crooked Houses has been "inundated" with phone calls and catalog requests since the episode aired Monday evening.

"Within 60 seconds of Kate saying the phrase 'crooked houses' on TV last night there were 170,000 visitors to our Web site," said Halliday

Halliday said his Web developers are still scrambling to process the influx of requests the company has received since last night, but said that so far they are estimating that half a million people logged on to the site Monday and nearly 7,000 people have requested catalogs as of 10 a.m. today.

"The phones are ringing off the hooks," said Halliday, who estimated that the company has built 500 houses since it was founded in 2005.
The price of the playhouses depend on the model and range, from $1,249 for an original model that is delivered unassembled and unpainted to $5,000 as the starting price of a customized home, whose designs Halliday said "can get pretty crazy."

Halliday estimates that the homes delivered to the Gosselin family, which were designed to look like a pirate ship, a haunted house, a veterinary clinic and a garden house, were "at least $7,000 apiece."

Asked whether Kids Crooked Houses donated the homes to the TV family, Halliday said, "We've been well compensated for our efforts."

Halliday said that the Gosselins' houses had been in the works since October 2008, when the company -- an employee of which is friends with one of the Gosselins' publicists -- sent customization materials to the family's Pennsylvania home.

"We sent crayons and markers to the kids to color in houses that they would like us to make," said Halliday. "Then we do a custom illustration and send it back to the family where the kids can then tell us that it either looks good, or we make changes."

Original homes usually take two to three weeks to deliver, said Halliday, whereas customized homes like the Gosselins' can take up to two months.

"Once they were able to play in them they were so happy," said Halliday. "It just reconfirms our position that these homes spark their creativity."

"Within minutes of playing with the houses, they came and told me that there was a bear behind the house -- but it was just their imagination," he said. "That's the beauty of it." [OP's note: GAG]

Halliday said he was not notified until last week that the episode featuring his company would be the same one where the family announced they were splitting up.
He said that when he met the family he did not notice any outward hostility between Jon and Kate Gosselin but did say the couple interacted very little with each other and mainly focused on their kids.
"We had no idea our houses would be combined with the Gosselins' special announcement," he said. "To be completely honest, it was great exposure for us, but it was bittersweet."
"We met the family, and Kate is an amazing woman and Jon is the sweetest guy you'll ever meet, and they both love their kids so much," he said.

"All I saw were loving parents."

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I had to trim most of the article since it was three fucking pages long. Who the fuck wants to read a 3 page long article about some crooked houses and a broken home?