Une Petite Maison -- the AIA Homes Tour

It's been over a year since my last post on the project, and we've been happily living in the house since last September.  It was featured recently in a houzz.com article, and will be on the AIA Austin Homes Tour, Nov. 2-3.

The front porch was finished off with an end-of-project splurge-- Kyle Gordon of KG Stone delivered some travertine pavers reclaimed from the LBJ Library remodel, and we laid them over the existing and new concrete.

Roger and Paul Wintle of Texas Trim did a fantastic job on all of the cabinets and trim work.  Paul practically lived at the house for about six weeks, and was happy to move on when I stopped asking him to build "just one more cabinet."  Jeff Bennett stepped in to help with the office cabinets and the kitchen butcher block.  Paul's "piece-de-resistance" is featured in the new dining room/library-- a full-height wall of bookshelves.

Paul and I collaborated to design the "wood tiled wall," which is composed of ripped-down panels of maple plywood attached in a running bond pattern (which echoes the travertine on the front porch).  Rafael Gamez, our excellent painter, came up with the whitewash finish.  The "Gransuite" can be seen through the open doorway.

The boys' old bedroom and bathroom have been converted to provide a peaceful guest suite for visitors.

 

Decorum Stone provided the Hanstone countertops at the kitchen island.  The look complements the "Healing Aloe" paint color (Benjamin Moore) that Ashley picked for the cabinets.

The wood butcher block countertop is from IKEA.  Groove Glass fabricated the steel frame for the stair guardrail, and Nick Bell installed the maple panels.  The original white oak floors were refinished, and new flooring was laid over the kitchen's original pine.

A barn door under the stair leads to a new office, which overlooks the backyard.  We carved out some space in the hallway for a "family locker" system.

A door off of the office leads to a new laundry room.

Paul Wintle built the new media cabinet in the family room.  The master bedroom is one of the few rooms that wasn't changed during the project (though we did add a couple of bookshelves and a new dresser).

The hall upstairs has a cutout window that looks down into the dining room.

We salvaged quite a bit of the original longleaf pine from interior walls and ceilings, and re-used it as flooring in the boys' bedrooms.  The two rooms are divided by back-to-back closets, and can be closed off from the hall by a large barn door.

We were able to design a cozy nook above the vaulted dining room ceiling-- it's a perfect reading spot for Beckett.

The corner windows bring in plenty of light, and are another nice spot to perch.

Many years ago, I promised the boys a "Scooby Doo" bookcase.  We finally had a chance to design it.  The bookcase rolls aside on skateboard wheels to reveal the hidden music room.

The bathroom has good light and a simple palette of glass tile in two colors (from Hakatai).

There's still a bit of landscaping to do, but hopefully everything will be in place by the weekend of November 2nd/3rd-- come visit us on the AIA Austin Homes Tour!  Thanks to everyone who put in so much time and effort on the project (and thanks to Patrick Wong and Whit Preston for the great photographs).

Une Petite Maison - the project begins!

We bought our little house in South Austin in 1998, fresh out of graduate school.  We were living in Clarksville at the time and we loved the area, but couldn't find anything in our price range.  When Ashley's mom heard we were going to pay $108,000 for an 820-square-foot cottage that needed work, she thought we were crazy.  The house had been a rental, inhabited by a man with an apparently incontinent cat.  Fortunately there were some nice oak floors under all the stained carpet, and we managed to fix it up pretty well over the next few months.

The day we closed on the house, the porno theater on the corner closed (photo above of its transformation into office space by Miro Rivera Architects).  Back in those days, South Congress was still a bit seedy, and the Hotel San Jose rented rooms by the hour.  Needless to say, the neighborhood has changed a bit.  Though we are technically in Bouldin Creek, we're part of an island between South First Street and South Congress, and our neighborhood definitely has more of the SoCo vibe.

We added on to the house in 2002, when our first son Corbin was two years old.  I contracted the project, which consisted of a 700-square-foot addition that contained a family room, master bedroom and master bathroom.  We also remodeled the kitchen, doing a lot of the work ourselves.  We just recently decided to expand again, and now we're in the process of moving 14 years worth of accumulated junk out of the front part of the house (the original cottage) so that we can get the project started.

The first step was to obtain a "life safety permit" which is required when previous work has been done without a final inspection.  Unfortunately, that was my fault-- we were in a hurry to finish up the first addition so that my parents (who were coming from Singapore) could stay with us.  So 10 years after the fact, we got our final inspection.  We also needed to obtain a tree permit-- we have two large live oaks in our back yard, and any tree over 19" diameter is considered a "protected" tree, subject to inspection by the City Arborist prior to the start of a construction project.  Fortunately our addition will be almost entirely above the existing house, so it won't affect the critical root zone of either tree.

We have been getting bids from subcontractors and we started the project two days ago.  The first task was to remove the asbestos shingles that were put up over the original wood siding.  It only took about four hours and the work was performed by CAP Construction, a San Antonio company certified for asbestos removal and transport (suits, masks and all).  Here's what the house looked like afterwards:

Now we can see the original wood clapboard siding, painted white.  There's still some black felt paper on the house which we'll remove soon.  Next up: foundation repair!