Vultures and at least one fox were living in this storybook house in Austin’s Travis Heights neighborhood when Jes and Nick Deaver’s clients first saw it. Having been derelict for a decade, its renovation was an unlikely choice for a retired couple looking to build a modern house on an infill lot. Until, that is, they met the Deavers.
Architects Nick Deaver, AIA, and Jes Deaver, AIA, are a father-daughter duo who have thought a lot about the distinctive qualities of urban neighborhoods. When Nick moved his family to Austin more than 20 years ago, he adapted a decrepit 1919 bungalow into a modern home and studio, creating fresh, airy interiors that honor its proportions and preserve its best period details. A deliberate departure from the large new homes that overwhelm some of Austin’s dense older neighborhoods, this considered approach has guided the firm’s work ever since. They are keenly attuned to what it means for urban dwellers to belong to a place, not just through their home’s materials but to history through its massing and scale.
Even if clients don’t have the vision, the architects enjoy showing them the possibilities. That’s what happened in this case. The couple loved their architect-designed modern house in Palo Alto, California, and were looking for something similar in their move to Austin. In fact, they had bought a house in a neighborhood sympathetic to teardowns and arrived one weekend to interview architects, including the Deavers. “Through the process of seeing the modern details in Nick’s house and how you can live modern in a historic structure, they began to rethink the house they had bought,” Jes says.
The other nearby neighborhood had lost its character because of the many teardowns, adds Nick. “Our conversation gave them a new way of thinking about how they might live a more modern lifestyle in a neighborhood that hasn’t abandoned its past. We told them we thought it was important to spend time discovering Austin and finding the qualities they wanted to be part of. They could see we had built a modern addition to a historic bungalow and decided to take a similar tack.” The couple sold the property they were going to build on and bought a condo as home base while they searched for another house. Within the year they found the quirky 1930s cottage on a historic-designated street.
Storied Past
Just 1,192 square feet, the original cottage sits slightly askew on a narrow, 52-foot-wide lot and has an asymmetrical entry gable that gives it a fairytale look. The land slopes up gradually from front to back, which is probably why the pier-and-beam house was built 4 feet above grade at the front, but the unguarded entry platform felt not only dangerous but disconnected from the ground. In addition to larger living spaces, the clients wanted a pool and a pool/guest house for hosting out-of-town friends.
A rear addition that accommodated these requests would have to skirt two live oaks that crowded the middle of the backyard. The architects responded by placing a bar-shaped, 936-square-foot addition close to the west property line, giving the owners a wide garden, pool, and deck on one side and a narrow garden on the other. This position also presented the opportunity for the addition’s interior spaces—an open kitchen/dining and living room—to sit close to the trees. The concrete slab foundation—68 feet-long-by-15-feet wide—incorporates a cantilever 28-feet-long-by-5-feet-9-inches wide to protect the root zones. Outfitted with a sauna, the pool house attaches to the living space across a dogtrot at the rear of the lot.
As required by the historic landmark commission, the renovation preserved the home’s teardrop yellow pine siding, roof shape, and window placements. Because most of the siding was rotted, the architects replaced it in kind on a rainscreen system. “The front was a restorative effort that continued around to two sides at least to the first 15 feet,” Nick says. “We replaced the original windows but repaired and refurbished the sashes, adding our own take on the delicate dividers in some of the windows that were probably taken away years ago. The east-side eave of the entry is tilted asymmetrically from the western side of that gable, and the radiused door and window higher in the gable don’t align. Those quirky adjustments were our inspiration.”
An example is the addition’s corrugated metal roof, with its curved ridge and exposed fir rafter tails. “We wanted to maintain a subordinate roof, so from the street you aren’t seeing an overpowering new structure behind this delicate antique structure,” Jes says. “Curving the roof allowed us to get lower, and it has some whimsy in how it relates to the storybook cottage.”
Yin and Yang
Inside, the design deftly sets up the connection between old and new. Although the original house isn’t parallel to the lot, the addition follows the property lines to maximize its square footage and make room for the pool. “Tying the addition’s concrete slab floor into the pier-and-beam old bungalow, we had to make sure everything lined up perfectly to achieve the vision Nick and Jes had,” says builder David Moody.
The gut renovation resulted in a central art corridor running front to back, flanked by a front office, hall bath, and service kitchen on the west side. On the east side is a second front office and behind it, the primary suite opening to a screened porch. New white oak flooring is laid out orthogonally with the antique structure, while the gallery walls angle slightly to meet the addition, accentuating the shift.
The foyer, too, sets up a yin-yang relationship between old and new. Removing a 9-foot ceiling exposed the vestibule’s asymmetrical roof form on the inside. Mirroring the dimensions of flush strip lights that wash down the gallery walls, a linear hanging fixture uplights the foyer’s complex ceiling planes. The architects also reused the front door but flipped it inside out and reversed the swing. This improved the entry flow and the peekaboo window’s relationship with the window above the door. In another neat juxtaposition, the exterior’s damaged wood was replaced with new wood, now on the inside, while the refurbished historic wood faces out.
In modernizing historic houses, the Deavers are attentive to how architecture can strengthen human and neighborhood connections. “There are eateries to the west, and people walk their dogs to a park on the east,” Nick says. “By having offices at the front of the house, with charming and elegantly proportioned windows from which to watch people walking and biking, they become attached to something much larger.”
Close to Nature
Not only does the house relate to the vibrant streetscape, but the rear addition provides a visual link to Austin’s urban forest. “We spent a lot of effort to open the house to the canopy of live oaks and the cathedral of urban forest that extends well beyond their property to the east,” Jes says.
Inside the glass wall looking out on the garden, a 35-foot-long board-formed-concrete “tree bench” heightens the awareness of nature. “One edge is rounded, reflecting the playfulness of the arches in the foyer ceiling and the addition’s modern roof with its whimsical curve,” Jes says. “It’s also a playful reference to surfboards for the owners coming from California.” Cypress mullions on the window wall and a kitty-cornered screened porch are spaced randomly to evoke a cypress forest.
The addition’s interior and exterior are clad in raw cypress boards that vary in width and depth, while the back kitchen and owners’ closets are made with smooth cypress plywood veneers. Sinker cypress, harvested from the bottom of rivers, was used for windowsills in the baths and as a ledge that runs the length of the owners’ bathroom. “The cypress created a modesty and continuity we liked,” Jes says. “It feels like being in an architectural forest looking out to the urban forest beyond.”
“We spent a lot of effort to open the house to the canopy of live oaks and the cathedral of urban forest that extends well beyond their property to the east.”
—Jes Deaver, AIA
Outside, the deck arbor and the carport are two of a kind, both crafted from cypress beams resting on a pair of L-shaped steel columns that “talk to the pair of trees in the yard,” Jes says. Attaching the cantilevered carport to the house eliminated the need for a second set of supports that would have overstepped the side setback.
In front, a new entry garden incorporates generous stepped terraces that ground the house gracefully. “The garden also gave us a way to express something modern about our traditional house,” Jes says.
Throughout the duration, the team was careful to respond constructively to any neighbors’ concerns. So they felt validated when they got approval from a critic concerned about the wildlife, including a lovely fox, that would be displaced by fixing up the house. “One day the project manager called and said she got to meet the fox,” Jes says. “The fox poked her head into the attic space before the walls were closed in.” All the better when sensitive architecture preserves not just the sense of place for humans, but for nature too.
A guest house overlooks the deck and pool.
OFFbeat
Austin, Texas
Architects: Nick Deaver, AIA, and Jes Deaver, AIA, Nick Deaver Jes Deaver Architecture, Austin
Builder: David Moody and Ryan Pyka, Form to Finish, Austin
Landscape architect: Alyssa James, Studio 8sc, Austin
Structural engineer: Richard Luevano, Steinman Luevano Structures, Austin
Project size: 2,128 square feet
Site size: 0.16 acre
Construction cost: Withheld
Photography: Leonid Furmansky, Raymond Castro (aerials and front image with city skyline)
KEY PRODUCTS
Cabinetry: Vertical grain rift-sawn white oak veneer
Cabinetry hardware: Emtek
Cladding: Horizontal teardrop yellow pine, vertical rough cypress
Cooking vent hood: Zephyr
Countertops: Concrete, Caesarstone
Dishwasher: Bosch
Engineered lumber: TimberStrand
Entry door hardware: Emtek
Faucets: Artos
Flooring: White oak
Hot tub: Finlandia
Humidity control: Santa Fe Ultra 120
HVAC: Mitsubishi
Insulation: AMBI-SEAL
Interior cladding: Reclaimed sinker cypress
Lighting: Halo, PureEdge
Lighting control systems: Lutron
Outdoor decking: Alaskan yellow cedar
Outdoor pavers: Leuders limestone
Piping: Navien
Range: Bosch induction
Refrigerator: Bosch
Roof trusses: BMC
Roofing: Owens Corning
Sinks: Kohler
Skylights: VELUX
Thermal and moisture barriers: Stego Vapor Retarder
Toilets: Duravit
Tub: Victoria + Albert, Kohler
Underlayment and sheathing: Huber ZIP System sheathing
Ventilation: AprilAire, Panasonic
Windows/window wall systems: Fleetwood
Wine refrigerator: Zephyr