When an architect builds for herself
Industry practices bring most bang for the buck, and family gets dream home
Kristin Schuster’s family gravitates to the outdoors, and most would consider that a tough challenge in Houston’s steamy summers.
On a recent day when the temperature was well into the 90s, the Houston architect stood in her breezeway, a shady spot between the garage and the rest of her house, and made an unexpected declaration: “There really is a breeze.”
Schuster, principal at Inflection Architecture, which she launched a year ago, used every tool of her trade when designing and building a home in Southgate for her own family.
It’s a slim two-story on a standard lot in a neighborhood that hasn’t quite given over to the larger homes that replace teardowns elsewhere, and Schuster was concerned about the height in relation to their ranchstyle neighbors. An additional factor is that it’s elevated 3 feet off of the ground, a lesson learned in their previous experience in Bellaire where they lived in a floodplain.
To give the illusion that the home isn’t quite so tall, Schuster put the garage with a lower roof in front of the home, making the view shorter from the street. Its entrance is at the side of the home, inside the gated yard, leading some neighbors to dub the home “the sideways house.”
Schuster has designed plenty of homes for other people, but it’s the first for herself, and she wondered just a bit about the husband-wife, client-architect relationship: Might this be her biggest challenge?
“When you design a house for a family, you get to pre-empt marital disputes,” Schuster quipped. “In our old house, we were always going back and forth about the window shades because I like to let the light in and my husband likes privacy. So we have blinds only on the bedroom windows. We have a lot of eastern and northern light, so we rarely have to turn the lights on in the daytime.”
The strategic placement of windows in the modest, 2,000square-foot home with a 500square-foot garage apartment isn’t the only element important to its design. Siting the house to capture good natural light and prevailing breezes and creating a floor plan that helps her family stay connected were also key factors.
“I wanted a compact house,” Schuster said. “I first grew up in a house this size, but when I was in middle school, my family moved into a house that was three times the size. You’d walk in the front door and not know who was home. It was important to me that not be our experience.”
The Houston native feels strongly that good architecture is important to a family’s wellbeing.
“Architecture shapes and supports our relationships. If we’re not considering the way people want to relate to each other when we’re designing spaces, we’re going to mess that up,” she said. “How does a family spend evenings together? Should the kitchen be designed so kids can cook with their parents? How many people do you have over when you have a dinner party?”
“Having neighborhood parties is one of our favorite things, and it was important that the house could do that for us. That’s designing for families,” she said.
Schuster, 42, met her husband, Tobias Schuster, 45, through mutual friends when they both were in college, he at the University of Houston and she at Tufts University in Boston. After earning her undergraduate degree in art history, she returned to her hometown and enrolled in Rice University’s School of Architecture for a master’s degree.
“Art history was a fabulous degree. It’s probably one that people wonder what the value is, but I learned how to think and how to see, which is very important as an architect. And, Boston was just fun,” she said of her college experience.
The couple lived in the Bay Area in California for a couple of years but wanted to return home, where they still have family. For several years, Kristin worked at GSMA, a firm originally known as Glassman Shoemake Maldonado Architects. Tobias works in outside sales for the Sherwin-Williams paint company.
Together, the Schusters have identical twin daughters who are 10 years old and whose school community has become a big part of their lives. Behind them is the Rice Temple Baptist Church, good neighbors who invite them to their Wednesday night spaghetti dinners even though they don’t attend services there.
With a limited budget and not-inexpensive lot, Schuster set out to prove a number of things in the building of this home. First, that a contemporary-style home doesn’t have to be more expensive, and that when you’re thoughtful about every decision, you can keep costs down.
“One of the things I try to tell clients is that budget is a discipline tool. It’s your money to spend. I can tell you when we’re doing something that’s going to cost more than you want to spend, but at the end of the day, it’s their decision to make,” she said. “You have to decide if it’s worth it to you.”
Their construction costs were $160 a square foot — which she described as closer to spechome prices — instead of the $225-$250 a square foot for a contemporary home built for homeowners, or the $300 or more per square foot for modern homes.
Like most homeowners, the Schusters made lists of splurges and saves.
Cost savings came in a number of ways. For flooring, using less expensive No. 1 common white oak instead of No. 1 select saved a little. Instead of one or two large windows, they kept the windows long and narrow to have framing in between them and saved money on the window package. They used ordinary, $1.50-per-square-foot tile for the kitchen backsplash but installed it in a thoughtful manner. And instead of buying slabs of natural stone, they opted for man-made quartz, which you purchase by the square foot and have less waste.
Individually, each was a small savings but, as any homeowner knows, they added up.
Splurges? For starters, the swimming pool.
“For years, I debated about a swimming pool. My husband wanted to build, and I thought, ‘He’s going to be my most difficult client ever,’ ” she quipped. “But there were really only three things he cared about. He wanted a bigger-than-normal two-car garage, an attic he wouldn’t hit his head in and a swimming pool — and he wouldn’t be happy without all three.”
“He was absolutely right about the pool; it was money well spent. My favorite family time, now that it’s summer, is when everyone is home and in the pool and we make margaritas and splash around,” she added.
The pool, breezeway and even an “outdoor room” that is growing were all part of the master plan, too. At the back of their side yard is lawn furniture surrounded by young sycamore trees spaced to someday create a shady canopy and hold a lazy hammock. Clumping bamboo is starting to hide the wood fence, and a small patch of grass is just enough for the Schusters’ girls to play on if they’re not in the pool. It’s also just enough yard for the family’s sweet Corgi, Cocoa, who comes and goes as he pleases through his own doggie door.
“We’re outdoor people, so we live outdoors. A big part of what was important to us was making the entire property living space. The house is sited to give us privacy … but also you’ll see that (by midafternoon) the yard will be entirely in shade, so we’re able to be outside in the afternoon,” she said.
Inside, the public spaces are on the first floor, and bedrooms are on the second floor. At a landing that separates the master suite from the girls’ rooms, playroom and reading loft is a wall with a display of origami cranes.
Kristin decided to teach herself to make the paper birds and soon recruited her daughters to help her. In time, they had hundreds of artful creatures lying around.
“I knew they would go somewhere in the house, and one morning I woke up and realized this is where the birds are supposed to go,” she said. “I’m not a super-sentimental person, but I looked at it, and I started crying. That was the day this house became our home.”