Saving the Style of a Stick Frame Roof in Austin

Project by: Murray Legge Architecture
Location: Austin, Texas

It’s nice to have a reason to look up. While an eye catching ceiling seems like the provenance of manor houses with molding or folks with an ingenious inclination towards unexpected wallpaper, mid-century and modern homes can come with their own visually interesting ceilings. The team over at Murray Legge Architecture wanted to highlight and preserve the ceiling (among other things) in this post war beauty.

From the Murray Legge Architecture team: Austin’s current construction economy favors razing sites over working with existing structures resulting in the loss of Austin’s modest post-war building stock. This typical 1950s bungalow was transformed through a series of careful insertions into the building type preserving and working with the modest building massing and stick frame construction methodology. The inherent beauty, elegance and structural integrity of wood stick frame construction is often hidden, buried underneath finish materials such as gypsum board.

In this project we reveal the framing and allow it to shape the character of the space. We introduced balloon framing techniques to support the roof and placed a clerestory window on the outside of the framing, eliminating the need for a header and making it possible to conceal the glazing stops behind the continuous studs simplify the exposed framing. A layered roof assembly allowed for exposing the roof joist and plywood deck.

Many thanks to the team at Murray Legge Architecture!

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