Budget Breakdown: This $558K Texas Home Celebrates the Charm of Simple Sheds

To find the right property for what would become their family’s weekend retreat, architect John Redington and his father, Jack, took a two-week road trip around much of central Texas between their homes in Austin and the Dallas suburb of Frisco.

When their car climbed the gentle slope of a rural parcel for sale outside Llano in the Texas Hill Country, "We were completely enthralled," John remembers "There were so many wildflowers. As we got to the top, there were two trees that completely framed the view of the Riley Mountains. I was like, ‘This is our spot.’"

For John, an architect with award-winning Austin firm Side Angle Side, this was a chance not only to design a house that he and his young family, including wife I-Ping and baby son Lin, could enjoy with his parents, sister and friends. (Side Angle Side served as architect of record but with John as the project’s sole designer, a scenario he likens to a band member recording a solo album without leaving the group.) It was also a chance to marry his professional experience designing contemporary residential architecture with his work as an artist and historian devoted to vernacular Texas sheds and barns.

The architect grew up on a farm, where his appreciation for agrarian buildings began. He traces his hobby documenting these buildings to his affinity by Japan architecture firm Atelier Bow-Wow, known for documenting celebrating Tokyo’s micro-architecture in numerous publications.

"It got my gears turning: ‘What is that for Texas? What is that for my life?’ I concluded it was abandoned sheds," he explains. "They’re so incredibly beautiful."

John has since documented hundreds of decaying sheds around his home state, under the banner of his ongoing Low Plains project, not just photographically but through silk-screened artworks. More than half of the structures he’s documented have already been demolished or collapsed.