The guest house on Paint Creek Ranch in Paige, Texas was completed in 2005. The style lends itself to the craftsman motif with several more updated touches. The home was designed by the customers with simple shop drawings and built by West Hansen and his crew. Resting on a 1800 square foot concrete slab, the house has 10' walls, Anderson windows/doors, M-117 siding (wood), site-milled cedar exterior window and door trim, 26 gauge Colony Green metal roof, massaranduba wrap-around porch decking, craftsman style porch railing and a color scheme to match all the barns on the 200 acre ranch. Interior amenities include a corrugated metal cathedral ceiling with rough cedar scissor trusses in the main room, a rock fire place with mantle, large kitchen with customized and raised countertops, stainless steel accessories, 8' pocket doors, custom bathroom and tub, built-in drawers and entertainment centers in one bedroom and in the large entrance hall, large mudroom/dogroom/laundry and Australian cypress hardwood flooring throughout the entire downstairs and stairway. The upstairs occured as an afterthought once the customer saw how much room the 6:12 pitch roof allowed. So we added a third bedroom that doubles as an office and a half-bath upstairs. This still left plenty of room for three well-lit attic areas for the water heater, HVAC and storage.

Attempting this type of project, sans architect, required a great deal of patience, flexibility and a good sense of humor on behalf of the customer and the builder. Fortunately, this customer was a joy with whom to work and really ended up with quite a nice house.

All the interior doors were locally milled using MDF. The two exterior 3.0 doors are solid wood. That's a built-in dog door by the back door to the mud room. The ridge is topped with a star of Texas ridge cap, also stamped locally.

If you're wanting to build a house in a similar manner, I recommend collecting as many picture from magazines as you can and build a file in order to show us exactly what you're wanting. As for a budget, it's recommended to begin with the assumption that a custom house such as this will cost at least $120.00 per square foot with an increase in price with each added detail.