by Anne S. Lewis
So you’re thinking about buying a house; it’s summer and the house-trading season is certainly
upon us. But even if you’ve done it before, be prepared for a wild ride: In Austin, real
estate, like politics, is a contact sport. To begin with, this is not, in the
opinion of many, a great “house town.” Way too many Fifties and Sixties
“ranchburgers,” charmless homes of an even earlier vintage, and scads of least
common-denominator builder “tract homes” that insidiously appear wherever
there’s a legal lot. (All too often, these days, that will be when someone with
a nice backyard gets greedy and sells his house and yard –
separately.)
Once you’ve found the house of your dreams, or at least something that you’re
willing to settle for and rehabilitate, there begins a long series of
scrimmages with a long line of “thems”: the seller’s real estate agent (and
yours), the seller, the mortgage money people, property inspectors, appraisers,
title insurers… It goes on. From the moment you decide to make an offer until
the closing day, you’ll be in a heightened state of alert trying to anticipate
every problem before the property is put in your name. All too often, if my
experiences are typical, when the dust settles, the deed’s in hand and you’re
well into your first months in your new dwelling, that’s when you begin
to feel like the cat that watched the wrong mouse hole. Before the closing,
you’ll obsess over a possible drainage problem and a few termites; then,
sitting on the couch in your living room, startled to hear in vivid Lucas sound
the unsavory gurgle of water making its way from an upstairs toilet onward to
the city sewer system, you wonder why your inspector didn’t notice that the
plumbing pipes in the wall were not insulated. Oh, well… next time you’ll get
it right.
Surely, there’s a way to finesse a change in habitat – in Austin – how to pick
from slim pickings and maybe, with just a bit of work, end up with a house that
you can have chemistry with, without too many structural surprises. I went
looking for answers – a few tips, really – from a couple of professionals whose
opinions I myself frequently solicit. Paul Lamb, an architect whose visionary
touches add magic, whimsy, and soul to dwellings where none before existed, and
Don Crowell, builder par excellence – why couldn’t he have built our
home? – who’s probably the contractor of choice for most of the city’s great
architects.
PAUL LAMB, ARCHITECT
Austin Chronicle: Do you have a few words of wisdom for the
prospective home buyer out there, demoralized in a slim-pickings market? In
other words, when it becomes clear that the house of your dreams is not to be
found in the Multiple Listing Service, is there an alternative route to
happiness?
Paul Lamb: In my opinion, if there’s one great thing that you
like about a house, that’s all you need. Walk into the house and trust your
feelings – if you think to yourself, “I could live here,” that’s what you
should listen to. Look for the character in a house – that something that you
respond to – and find a way to play that up somehow, to turn the house into
something you’ll enjoy.
AC: Can you give us some examples of a few key changes that
can be made in a house to maximum advantage?
P.L.: Everybody feels better in a house with good light and light
is the easiest thing to monkey with. I like to add windows in unexpected
places. It doesn’t have to be in a living room behind the sofa. Maybe there’s a
place in the hall where you read the mail and you might add a window there to
enhance that spot. Every house has one little eccentric space and if you
respond to it, you can enhance it with a window. You might put a window
somewhere where you want to get away from everyone for a few minutes to make
that time even more special. Maybe a special moment for you is when you get
your child up in the morning – add an east window in that room to add morning
light to shine on that spot.
Maybe you would want to add a sitting room to a master bedroom or add an
alcove in that room so that the bed is not the focal point of it. Other ways to
add character to a house would be to figure out some way to relate the house to
an outside area. Almost every house has some way to do this, whether it’s a
porch in the front or back, an area outside of a bathroom – maybe beyond a
shower – or an outdoor area where you could build a fireplace.
Most people are afraid of individuality in a home and I’m not necessarily
talking about weirdness, just a little eccentricity. We shouldn’t be so
hog-tied to conventional houses – it’s important to blend the character in a
house with your lifestyle, that’s good living in a house and good architecture.
Trust your instincts. And don’t worry about resale value.
A.C.: One of my favorite rooms in a Paul Lamb house is often
the bathroom. You’ve taken what in many homes is the most undistinguished room
– either strictly functional, dank and dark, or cheesed up ad nauseam – and
turned it into something amazing, a place you’d want to spend a lot of time in.
You’ve added sunlight and space to a cramped, dark Hyde Park bathroom by going
up – actually adding a second turreted, windowed story. Or added an enormous,
high-ceilinged, window-studded, dance-studio-like master bathroom to a boring
Fifties ranchhouse that turned out to be one of the most dynamic rooms in the
house. How do you design a great bathroom?
P.L.: Bathrooms are big these days. It’s not just the necessities of
grooming that happen there; it’s an event. It’s a room where you can share a
rare, intimate moment with someone without being disturbed, i.e. if you’re both
getting up at the same time or getting ready for bed at the same time. The
Sixties ranchhouse design did not value the bathroom, the master bath was
simply functional, closet-like – shower, toilet, sink, no tub – that was for
the kids in the bigger bathroom down the hall.
I like a little volume in the bathroom. I have, in some houses,
compartmentalized the messiest part – the shower – and the most private part –
the toilet – in order to make the rest of the room somewhere that you could
hang out in. Let it double as a dressing area, with the closets opening out
from it.
A.C.: Any advice on accepting a home’s limitations?
P.L.: Consider the character of the house. Houses have a certain
style, which you can’t fight and better like: It’s its basic personality. You
can do wonderful twists on a house’s basic personality or do what I call
turning up the volume on these, but you can’t ignore its essential character
and pretend it’s something it’s not. A Sixties ranchburger, for example, will
always be a Sixties ranchburger: You can’t make it into anything else. But
though they’re totally out of style, there’re some nice features about them –
everything’s on one level, all horizontal, the kitchens are well laid out –
it’s very easy living.
Another consideration is how the house is sited on the lot. Does the house
face in a direction that suits your lighting needs? A house that faces west,
for example, gets hot (in the summer) western sun all afternoon and no sun in
the morning. (The former might be worked around by interposing a great porch
between you and that western sun.) A house that faces south has light that’s
the easiest to control; it’s the most desirable direction. A north-facing house
with not many windows has a different light quality – one with lots of windows
offers a light similar to a painter’s studio light. These are all things you
should think about when considering whether your lifestyle needs can be met in
a house.
DON CROWELL, BUILDER
A.C.: Is there a way to increase your chances of after-the-closing
happiness with as few surprises as possible?
D.C.: I have an idea that may seem like a lot of trouble, or perhaps
impractical in the kind of real estate market we often have here in Austin, or
even too expensive, but given the enormous investment of buying a home, I think
it’s a good one. The plan is, to assemble a team, consisting of a property
inspector, a builder, and an architect before you start shopping for a
house so that when you find something you could get serious about, your team
can come and check out the house before you make an offer. I would want to have
the three of them together at the house at the same time, kicking the tires. It
wouldn’t take but maybe an hour for them to give me crucial information about
what maintenance expenses I might expect to incur with this particular house
over the length of time I expect to be living there. This way, the chemistry is
different – you can make a more educated offer, knowing what you do about the
house at the time, than if you go the traditional route of waiting until
after your offer has been accepted (conditioned upon the house passing
the inspection) when at that point everyone usually wants to ignore or downplay
any problems that may exist.
A.C.: What would a builder and an architect bring to the
decision that a conventional property inspector wouldn’t?
D.C.: Sometimes the inspector will miss the big picture. His job is to
tell you about immediate problems and the short-term future. It’s not, for
example, his job to know what is an inherent design defect in a house. Take a
house with a flat roof. The inspector will tell you whether the roof is leaking
now or if there is evidence of its having leaked in the past. What he may not
tell you, or know, is that some types of older flat roofs need repair every
three to four years. This is something you’re more likely to hear from a
builder or an architect. Other information an architect or a builder is more
likely to offer you than an inspector, would be about such things as the
effects that the presence or absence of an overhang – the eaves that extend
beyond the roof – will have on the life of your home. An overhang on a house is
extremely desirable – it protects the windows, the walls, and the interior from
solar gain. Without an overhang, a house will need painting more frequently.
With foundation problems, the inspector will likely note obvious problems but
he will probably not be able to tell you whether the foundation in question is
under-designed. I would want a structural engineer to take a look at that if I
were going ahead with the sale.
A.C.: Any tips on picking an inspector?
D.C: Find somebody who’s small enough to get under the house to
take a good look under there.
A.C.: What if you’re buying a new house?
D.C.: I would ask to see a set of blue prints, and interview the builder
and the architect to get the history of the home’s construction.
A.C.: Why are there so few interesting houses in Austin?
D.C.: Up until the last 20 years, the builders in Austin were not
particularly skilled and the population could not support a good supply of
architects. Only when income levels rise sufficiently to create a market for
architects can a city support that profession. Builder-wise, there was an era
in Austin, lasting until the early Sixties, of master builders. A master
builder was a superlative craftsman who designed and built the entire house,
from the framing to kitchen cabinets. He used very high quality building
materials, including lumber. These days, builders delegate to subcontractors,
the key being to find a good builder who will hire only good subs and not the
cheapest. Also, the quality of materials, including lumber, has declined
tremendously in the last 10 years. Lumber is no longer dried like it used to be
before it’s used. That problem can be mitigated by using a higher quality –
though more expensive – lumber, this being something that a good builder will
automatically do.
This article appears in July 28 • 1995 and July 28 • 1995 (Cover).