Natural Home

May/June 2000 issue of Natural Home Magazine, featuring Frank and Amy Meyer's Home in Austin, Texas.

An Austin Couple learns that straw bale and wood frame construction can be seamlessly united by the right finishing touches.

WHEN HIS WIFE, AMY, insisted on buying a 1950 wood-frame home in the Travis Heights section of Austin, Texas, Frank Meyer began pondering how to build a pleasing straw-bale addition whole meeting the city's off-street parking mandates and providing yard for their Lhasa Apso, Thumper Stein.

People look at these shapes and say "How did you come up with these?" says Frank, owner of Thangmaker Construction, which specializes in straw bale building. "I say, we got here because of the dog, this particular design wouldn't have evolved this way."

Amy, traffic-weary from living 9 miles south of Austin, jumped at the chance to buy the 1,100-square foot home-an asphalt-sided eyesore, surrounded by a chain-link fence-because she knew properties in Travis Heights didn't stay on the market long. She liked the windowed bathroom and the hardwood floors, and she told Frank he could do anything he wanted to make the home suit him.

Because the house was within city limits, Frank had to contend with the stringent rules and regulations when he planned his renovation. The previous owners had met Austin's off-street parking requirement by putting their cars in the front yard, a space Frank and Amy needed to reclaim for the dog. The couple also wanted to save the property's three live oak trees, which give welcome relief during the Central Texas Summers.

Frank mulled over all sorts of elaborate schemes, including a doggie tunnel, before he came up with a plan to build a 500-square-foot straw bale living room addition and front porch that opens onto the fenced yard, accessible to Thumper Stein via a doggie door. Instead of a garage, Frank created a carport under a small verandah jutting off the upstairs dining room, part of the original structure. Adjacent to the dining room, he added a 120-square-foot straw-bale sitting nook.

“That’s the organic shape that came out of all this chaos of possibilities,’’ Frank says. Adds Amy, “Nobody could understand his idea until it was built.’’

Frank and two carpenters framed the post-and-beam addition using salvaged wood, then the Meyers hosted a bale-raising party and workshop for about twenty friends, University of Texas students, and would-be builders. The group raised 160 bales in a day, completing the structure just in time to drink beer inside as a huge thunderstorm moved in.

After Frank and an associate detailed the straw, cutting out windows and niches and running wiring, the Meyers hosted several plaster parties to apply three coats of stucco inside and out. “It’s something anybody can do—we had seven- and eight-year-old kids over here helping us—but it’s hard, heavy dirty work, and it’s very messy,’’ Frank says. Once the straw bale was sealed, Frank and Amy decided to stucco the original house as well, to give the home a unified look.

“Straw-bale additions are really feasible. Technically or structurally, there’s nothing very sophisticated about tying wood to a straw building,’’ Frank explains. “But visually, it can be a problem. I didn’t want to stucco the whole house. If you had vertical wood siding that lends itself to straw, you could make that work. But with asbestos siding, we couldn’t see that.’’

Frank’s eye for detail also adds to the home’s pleasing façade. He gathered cedar sticks from the woods just outside of Austin and whittled each one to make a structural support for the front porch overhang. Inside, he built stairs, handrails, kitchen countertops and a dining room table out of laminated bamboo (Plyboo). The result is a far cry from the small white box Amy snatched up only three years ago.

“The whole add-on was kind of an organic process,’’ Frank says. “I like to build that way—feeling my way along. I always leave myself open to changes. That really slows down the process, but you get more in the long run.’’

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