Salvaged Parts Form a New-Old Texas Hideaway
With its weather-beaten walls and rusted metal accents, this bucolic Texas hideaway seems to elicit generations of Western history in every crack and cranny. Yet despite its own ancestral appearance, the home is fresh — a modern prefab contrived from locally salvaged materials.
The owners, a couple from Austin, purchased the property years ago but never knew exactly what to do with it. When they finally decided to create a vacation home, they turned into Tracen Gardner and his team at Reclaimed Space, which specializes in creating new structures from repurposed materials. Gardner found just the right spot with this particular refuge on a secluded parcel in a grove of live oaks.
at a Glance
Who lives here: This is a weekend getaway for a few.
Location: 2 hours outside of Austin, Texas
Size: 640 square feet; 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom
Photography: Joseph Pettyjohn
Reclaimed Space
Like many of Gardner’s layouts, this home is a prefab structure constructed off-site. After cooperating with the client on the plan, Gardner and his team employed their hefty supply of deconstructed barn wood and salvaged metal to create this cozy cottage.
Gardner chose Galvalume for the roofing, because this zinc- and – aluminum-coated steel is good in representing the overpowering Texas heat and may last up to three times more than traditional composite shingles. It provides the structure a modern appearance.
Reclaimed Space
The clients loved the rusted tin on the home’s exterior but wanted a more refined appearance inside. Clean tin was applied into the ceiling, while the walls were coated in reclaimed longleaf pine. Milk paint gives the wood a slightly whitewashed look that allows the grain and personality to glow.
Reclaimed Space
The clients chose the furniture and accessories — a mixture of older and newer items that match the house’s laid style fashion.
The front of the kitchen island is paneled in longleaf pine formerly used for flooring. The subtle stripes that stipple the face are vestiges of this tar paper that once covered its surface.
Reclaimed Space
Silestone that was durable was chosen by the owners for a number of those counters. Among the few new materials in the home, it has a creamy colour that complements the milk paint onto the walls.
Reclaimed Space
The living room and kitchen overlook a grove of live oaks. Gardner oriented the home to take advantage of this view in addition to the shade that keeps the house cool regardless of the big windows and sliding glass doors.
Reclaimed Space
The same as the walls, wood countertops, the cupboards and floor are made from longleaf pine. The floorboards are more than a hundred years old and sealed with a transparent water-based foam to emphasize every nick and scrape. The owners found a piece of flooring using a 1950s advertisement for women’s boots lacquered onto it, which they maintained.
Reclaimed Space
A screened-in porch provides the owners a cool, bug-free location for relaxing, night or day. Pine from the inside of a deconstructed window outlines the walls.
Reclaimed Space
For the exterior deck, Gardner chosen for sturdy, easy-to-clean composite decking by Everboard instead of reclaimed wood. (After the home was photographed, the clients expanded the deck to match the width of this screened-in porch.)
Among those clients went back and forth between red and turquoise for the exterior doors, finally picking this merry blue. “I think she made the right choice,” Gardner says.
Reclaimed Space
The window on the right of this home inside this photo receives heavy sunlight and faces east. Gardner designed a pop-up metal awning to help shade the inside.
Reclaimed Space
The toilet has the same milk-paint wall remedy and Silestone counters as the main living space. Salvaged frames hold mirrors in lieu of modern medicine cabinets.
Reclaimed Space
The bedroom is the only room without the milk-paint wall therapy. Gardner highlighted the wall using a custom collage of woods that were closed behind the bed.
More ways to used salvaged materials in your home’s design