August 29, 2008
More than a Renovation
Deron blogged about Blake’s house in Dwell. The article refers to his house here in Austin as a renovation. I am lucky enough to know Blake and his house. I thought he had built it pretty much from scratch, so I asked if it was indeed a renovation. Here is what he said.
Well, to answer your question, no, the house isn’t a renovation. It’s built from the ground up. That gets a little confused on occasion. And I can understand why. I bought an old house, lived there the entire time, and put another house in the same location, so it’s easy to see why people would call it a renovation. Truth is, I lived there, knocked the whole thing down in stages and built back up. What still exists from the old house is the slab (now about 60% of the whole house footprint), which I had to completely repair and later pour on top of anyways. I also reused material from the house, like doors and framing lumber, too, but nothing else about the original house exists now. I put some pics online awhile back that illustrate the process a little.
It truly is beautiful right down to the wall mounted bottle opener in the kitchen. You can see his pictures of the process here and more of his stuff on his website.
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that’s awesome, Barry, thank you. his house, and his furniture, really spoke to me.
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