Great Little Stone House in Texas - Designed by Architect Chris Krager of KRDB

As I often do, I was watching HGTV's show Small Space Big Style (episode HSSBS-410), and was very happy to find this hip little stone house in Texas. Besides its great modern style, modest footprint (1,000 sq-ft), and simple plan, I really like the massive walls. Made of large stone blocks, lifted and set in place by the owner and friends (with lots of determined DIY elbow grease ), the house blends well with the rugged surroundings of the site. It's a very natural construction method that is quite appropriate for the hot, dry climate of the site. It looks amazing too.






Inside, the house has a single great room for living, cooking and dining, and two small bedrooms in the back; one for parents and one for their two small sons. The bathroom is in between the two bedrooms. The large expanse of glass on the great room looks out onto a nice landscape, and combines with a cantilevered patio to melt away the differences between inside and out, and expand the effective living area. It looks like a very casual and comfortable little house. Definitely not short on style.





The house was designed by Chris Krager of KRDB. The firm does slick modernist housing that is also meant to be affordable to people on real budgets. Great looking stuff. You can see more images of this stone house and other awesome projects on the KRDB site - the URL is lividpencil.com - how cool is that!

You can also see a lot more nice pics on the owner's site, Primitive Modern. I was figuring the house to be a vacation cottage, but actually I was wrong. On the KRDB site this house is called the "San Marcos Guest House." When I contacted the owner, Max, he sent me some pics of the house, and the new main house that is being built nearby. Max and his family have been living in their future guest house while their regular house is being built.





Pretty nice, huh? Max says it is almost done, and I can't wait to see what the completed house is like. I see that it has the same great modern style and rugged stone walls. But I'm still most infatuated with the little guest house. I like its natural stone walls, its simple style, and the fact that the owners did so much of the construction themselves. It must be very satisfying to build with your own two hands, using the simplest construction material offered by nature, one that will stand the test of time.

Image credits - Small Space Big Style (HGTV site), Primitive Modern site