I took some pics this afternoon of an old house that was on a parcel of land I bought late last year. After sufficient tooth grinding and brow wrinkling, I decided to restore it, so I will be getting started in about 3 weeks.

LOTS of work to do, but it will be fun to use it to live Texas life with a taste of the late 1800's, with wood burning cookstove, heating stoves and fireplaces, and 12' ceilings and a red brick floored kitchen and breezeway.

BTW, I counted a single herd of 51 deer out there a coupla weeks ago. Didn't have my camera, so I guess you'll have to take my word for it.












[This message has been edited by Yuccadoo (edited 6/29/2010 9:25p).]

[This message has been edited by Yuccadoo (edited 7/15/2010 2:57p).]

That ... is awesome!


And did it come with the goat??

FKNA Awesome.

Please post updates/requests for help.

Kyle Stadium huh?

Do you have anything to do with Yuccadoo nursery by any chance?


Now the thing that I call livin' is just bein' satisfied with knowin' I got no one left to blame

No, but I know their history and am a bit of a yucca nut as far as botanicals go. I have a fairly large garden with many yuccas and agaves and have surfed their website many times, but I have not set up an appt to go out there for a one on one look at their place.

Here is the other house I am restoring right down the road:









Large Pecan Tree right in front of house




[This message has been edited by Yuccadoo (edited 7/15/2010 2:58p).]

I hope I have the time, money and patience to do those type of projects one of these days. Good luck on the old dog run. Are you going to re-open the breezeway between the two buildings like they built them in the 1800's?

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The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.
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--Marcus Tullius Cicero

No, I am going to leave the doors up where I can choose to open or leave closed seasonally/day for breezes.

I have spent about 2 months conceiving a new dog run design using modern building techniques, light wells, and porches that is a pretty cool hybrid that I hope to build as a spec house in a coupla years when I get the details worked out. It actually uses 2 dog runs that cross in the center, with high clerestory that drops light into the rooms indirectly from the runs. It will have details that allow a lot of light into the house when exterior curtain 'walls' under porch are open but have the ability to roll down and close off to exterior at night/esp winters, with added weather protection.

I have a lot of details to work out on the wall systems, but I have a firm concept of what I want in my mind, FWIW. I may break down and pay an architect to flesh it out for me.

good luck. looks like it will be a great project. that's an awesome looking house and piece of property.

The burnt orange stain has gotta go, for obvious reasons.

very cool

That's awesome. Are you doing the work yourself or hiring most of it out?

Also.... Dog run? Never heard that term before. Any idea on origins/definitions? I'm assuming architectural style that involves high ceilings and passive cooling...

Looks pretty cool and a nice piece of property.

Old Texas indigenous pioneer style house with 2 large independent rooms connected by an open porch between them....the 'dog run' being the porch. If you ever go out to Independence, Texas, take a right onto 696 at the corner of Hwy 50 just past old Baylor and you will see some 'authentic' dog runs on your right.

Or google it...I am sure you will find plenty of info there.

Found this blurb:

"DOG-RUN HOUSES. The dog-run, dog-trot, or double log cabin was a common type of house in Texas at the middle of the nineteenth century. The building consisted of two cabins separated by a ten or fifteen foot passageway, with a continuous gabled roof covering both cabins and the passageway between them, or dog-run. Often a porch was built to extend across the entire front of the house, and lean-to shed rooms were constructed at the rear of each cabin for additional space. The walls were made of horizontally laid hand-hewn logs, with the openings between the logs *****ed with sticks and clay. Later examples were often frame rather than logs. The floors were of either dirt, sawed boards, or split logs with the flat side up. There were few windows in frontier cabins, and glass windows were rarely seen in pioneer times. Each cabin had a door opening onto the dog-run. Doors and shutters were hung on rawhide or wooden hinges. The roofs were made of overlapping oak clapboards held in place by weight poles. The chimney was constructed of sticks and a clay mixture, and the hearth was made of smooth rocks. Later dog-run houses often had fine brick chimneys and shingled roofs. The purpose of the dog-run was to cool the house by providing shade and catching the breeze. The space served as a catch-all for farm and household articles and was the favorite sleeping place of the dogs. The structure was used on the frontier from Alabama to Ontario and has European antecedents."

Someone today insisted that it had an Acadian origin.

YuccaD

[This message has been edited by Yuccadoo (edited 6/29/2010 11:27p).]

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And did it come with the goat??

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Are you talkin' to me?




Seriously, I brought in 50 goats to help with clearing the underbrush. They are Spanish/Boer crosses, so good munchers of yaupon and they make decent Cabrito. They are having twins this month like crazy, too, and I have a pair of donkeys to watch over the youngun's from the evil coyotes.....


Here is a day old hangin' with momma:





[This message has been edited by Yuccadoo (edited 6/29/2010 11:47p).]

Blue star for preserving that house!

Do you know any of it's history?

Yes, I know everyone involved from original contruction to present.

Thats incredible.

Cool.

What are you going to do when the goats run out of yuopon and start eating the house? Mexican BBQ?

Where is Kyle Stadium?

Yuccadoo,
I'm an agave nut myself. I've recently fallen in love with Agave ovatifolia, "Whales Tongue" agave. Do you have one of those fellers?


Now the thing that I call livin' is just bein' satisfied with knowin' I got no one left to blame

OT: This past christmas, my neighbors hung red and white glass ball ornaments from the tips of their Whales' Tongue Agave plants. The end result looked like a very festive version of the Nameless Horrors of the Abyss.

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Interesting history on the dog-run. Can you share more of the history of the structure? The piers look modern, for instance...

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Where is Kyle Stadium?

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that's what i'm wondering.. thought he meant Kyle field at first read.. but then saw pics and said hmm don't think so.

For personal use, or are you going to sell it when done?

Sorry...Kyle field, yes. My apologies to the offended...so much for my class of 78' status. Call it old timers disease. And I wasn't in the Corps.

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Yuccadoo,
I'm an agave nut myself. I've recently fallen in love with Agave ovatifolia, "Whales Tongue" agave. Do you have one of those fellers?

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Yes, I had a beautiful specimum of whales tongue, but it got a bit too much moisure and spit the bit out on me. I will replace in an area that has a bit more relative elevation and less drainage issues.

Here is my weber's Agave that flowered this year:



Other botanicals from my principal residence:

Yuckadoo: Any of your project intended for sale? Excellent work!

Yuccadoo: How much of the work are you doing yourself? Don't think I saw a response to that. And was the architecture of your primary residence and the residence that you're restoring done by you, or someone else?

Excellent landscaping... I'm jealous.

That is an awesome historic house. I assume it must be out off 60 somewhere, correct?

Hopefully you'll update us on your restoration. Looks interesting, but I'd be in way over my head to try something like that.

Looking to adopt a 22 year old?

My parent's probably wouldn't mind.

very neat

Sorry if I missed it previously, but do you do this professionally, on the side, or just for fun?

Worked with architects in Austin (hiss) on my primary residence....4 years of design work with my family and Barley + Pfeiffer, and the hardscape was designed by Larry Schueckler when he was working at Land Design Group. Installation of hardscape was performed by Welch Construction, Inc., with subs including PUMA, and Mobley did the pool, with Alan King at Land Design Group overseeing the pool area and some of the hardscaping. Plants were selected through a mutual effort with my family and Old Southern Gardens group from a master list of over 500 botanical choices. Keith Ellis built my house.

The dog run is my project and I am subbing out various construction efforts, as well as the burnt orange house.

No, construction/remodelling/gardening is not my business. I retired as an engineer and business owner 2 years ago, so this is just a passion I am following these days: Exotic animals, fruit and nut orchards, botanical gardens, and repairs of houses that were on lands I purchased in order to preserve green belts in my area before developers enter the fray.

I'll keep a photoessay going here for those interested.

[This message has been edited by Yuccadoo (edited 7/15/2010 3:00p).]

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Cool.

What are you going to do when the goats run out of yuopon and start eating the house? Mexican BBQ?

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Yes, my culinary instincts will eventually take over but that is at least a year and a half away.....ample yaupon, hybrids of hawthorn and other robust understory that has a firm hold below the canopy of elms and oaks. They have hardly put a dent in it in the first 4 months.

They are leaving my elm mott alone, which amazes me.....I figured they would hit it first, but they have not touched the dense sedge living under those elms. I have seen the donkeys go down there but again, they haven't chewed it all down.

[This message has been edited by Yuccadoo (edited 6/30/2010 1:26p).]

Your garden looks very impressive, except for the obvious failing of no plumeria.

Thanks for sharing.

Very nice stuff.

Yuccadoo- would you mind posting more pics of your home and the landscaping? Obviously blot out the identifying stuff. But it looks pretty freakin' awesome.