When I first set out to build this weekend getaway and future retirement home by the shores of Lake Travis, I had little idea what I was getting into. With no prior construction or woodworking experience, I hardly knew where to begin. I work on computers for a living. I didn’t even own a saw.

 The only way I could complete this within my $10,000 budget was to build it myself. So I did lots of research into very old building techniques to find an utterly simple and low tech building material — mud and straw. At the end of substantial completion, some 3 years after groundbreaking, I added up all the receipts which were kept in a shoe box. Turns out I went a bit over budget, I’d spent a total of $25,000 for labor and materials on the house. Still, not too bad. 

The walls of this house, built of mud and straw, are nearly 2 foot thick. White-washed lime plaster on the exterior, and the interior walls are gypsum. The post and beam timber frame was from freshly felled loblolly pine from a local sawmill. The stone came from a nearby limestone quarry. The floors are antique long-leaf pine from an old schoolhouse and the bathroom is radiant-heated marble and granite salvaged from an old stone yard. Almost everything was either recycled, hand made, or practically dug out of the ground.