As the building of the first Passive House in Texas
continues, the inside of the house is slowly starting to take form.
The house is actually a remodel, and we have faced several design
limitations based on elements of the house as we bought it.
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| A view of the original kitchen. |
The main challenge was that the house had asbestos in the exterior
siding of one part of the house. While we originally wanted to demo the
entire house and start from scratch, we realized that the asbestos
abatement process would be costly and tedious. For this reason, we
decided to leave the original walls up that have the asbestos siding,
and simply contain them within the new walls. This is one of the safest
ways to deal with asbestos.
One room in the house: cheap vinal flooring, aging fixtures, paint peeling off the walls, and an overall aged and moldy feel
The house was built in 1955 as a 3 bedroom house with a carport. In
the 70′s, the owner knocked out a side wall of the house and merged it
with the carport to create 2 new rooms, which we found out served as a
beauty parlor in the neighborhood for many years. By the time we got
the house, it was in pretty bad shape. For the purpose of our remodel,
we would need to rip out every interior wall of the house, bump out the
back of the house and replace several exterior walls, build a new roof,
and replace half of the foundation.
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| The back of the house before the bump out. |
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| The entire roof is off, the old framing about to come down! |
All the interior walls ripped out, new floors being built, the old roof off and a new one in process!
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| The back of the house bumped out |
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Another view of the house, gradually getting framed out!
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