Budget Breakdown: With $288K, Two Architects Opened Up Their Brick House and Filled It With Surprise

Architects Katie Stranix and JT Bachman have many talents. Not only do they teach at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, but they’re also cofounders and principals at the multicity firm Office of Things, which designs residences, commercial projects, and artful installations (be it a meditation chamber or a lobby light fixture with 30,000 LEDs) for clients like Google and YouTube.

"With a lot of the work that we were doing, particularly at the beginning, the scope was very limited," Katie explains. "It was questioning, ‘What are the basic elements? How can you rethink those to create a space that is exciting and unexpected within a small footprint?’" As it happens, that mindset informed the design of their own Charlottesville home.

Before: Front Exterior

When their teaching gigs began in 2018, the couple were renting a home a five-minute drive from the UVA campus. A year later, they saw a very similar, brick-clad 1950s Cape Cod–style house for sale just down the street: "the standard American starter home," as Katie puts it.

The back and front yards were teeming with oak, maple, and cherry trees, and unlike their rental, this home came with a basement. These spaces would be useful as their family grew to eventually include two sons (now aged four and six), and Walnut, a rescue hound.

After: Front Exterior

After purchasing the property, the couple explored over a dozen different design ideas, some involving additions. But with their modest budget, Katie and JT asked themselves how they could work within the existing footprint but still make it feel expansive. "It was a rental for a long time, and the owner had intentionally chopped things up into a million rooms," Katie says. "There were so many things to undo and rethink."

Before: Back Exterior