Construction & Remodeling in Austin, TX

Austin is an old-houses-on-moving-ground city, and almost everything we get called for here follows from that. East Austin, Hyde Park, Travis Heights and the streets around them are full of bungalows built in the thirties, forties and fifties, sitting on pier and beam over Blackland Prairie clay that swells every wet spring and shrinks every dry August.

The houses ride that movement for decades. Then a door stops closing, a floor starts running downhill toward one corner, and a crack appears over a doorway that opens in summer and closes in winter. That is not a house falling down — it is a house telling you what is happening underneath it.

Why local knowledge matters in Austin

The other thing that shapes work in Austin is what a lot costs. When the land under a house is worth more than the house, moving to get one more bedroom stops making arithmetic sense, and building on the lot you already own starts to. Additions, garage conversions and backyard units are the normal answer here in a way they are not in a town where you could just buy a bigger house.

The city has also loosened what it allows on a single lot, which is why the question we get asked in Austin more than anywhere else is whether a cabin can go in the back garden — and increasingly the answer is yes.

• Blackland Prairie clay under most of the city, which swells in the wet and shrinks in a drought — the reason so many foundations here move
• Whole neighbourhoods of 1930s-50s bungalows in East Austin, Hyde Park and Travis Heights sitting on pier and beam
• The city has loosened its rules on second dwellings, so backyard units are now a normal thing to ask about rather than an exotic one
• Lots are expensive enough that building outward on the same lot beats moving

Neighbourhoods we work in: East Austin, Hyde Park, Travis Heights, South Congress, Windsor Park.