The Rhodes House - 4115 Avenue H
Featured on This Old House
One of only 35 homes in Austin to earn a five-star rating from Austin Energy’s Green Building Program, Michele Grieshaber and Michael Klug’s airy 1920s Craftsman bungalow was recently featured on PBS’s popular series This Old House. The transformation of the cozy two-bedroom, one-bath home into a spacious four-bedroom, two-bath was the first depiction the venerable program had done of a house being restored in an entirely, absolutely “green” process, down to the home’s rainwater-collection system, IceStone kitchen countertops, and tankless water heater, among many other energy-saving features. Even though the house is now 50 percent larger than it previously was, it will cost some $700 less to heat and cool because of the owners’ eco-friendly building choices.
Grieshaber and Klug asked their architect David Webber to create a 750-square-foot addition that blended compatibly with the existing home without towering over their neighbors’ homes. In addition to all the green-building considerations came the usual renovation headaches – as Grieshaber wrote on her blog on the This Old House website, “It seemed like it would be easy to pick colors for the exterior of the house. After all, you just pull a bunch of paint chips and select the ones you like. Ah, how naive.”