Our House

Our House - The Pedernales Palace
As you may or may not know, in 1998, we began work on our dream house, a straw bale 2 story, designed by Annie with many green features and lots of unique details. When we moved in here for real in 2000, we shut down our 2,600 square foot studio in town and moved our business into a very efficiently packed home office. AiM Productions now operates out of this space and we're happy and productive as can be, living and working overlooking the beautiful Pedernales River in the Texas Hill Country. We thought it was about time we showed the world this domicile and work space that we have built. If you want to see a larger version of a picture, just click on it. Hope you like our house. We're pretty proud of it.

Hard to get a big picture of the front - too many trees in the way. Here's an oblique angle.	From our front path, the front entrance comes into view. The columns came from San Miguel de Allende in Mexico. The chair came from our local HEB supermarket.

Annie hammered symbols from a variety of cultures into the copper on the front porch roof gable end. Among them are "marital bliss", "safety from lightening", etc.	This is one of three nichos we cut into the exterior straw before stuccoing. Annie did the tile and mirror art work.

Here's the front door, made by our brilliant friend Wolf Sittler-Bell. The red wood is mesquite we had to clear from the house site. The other wood is native pecan.	Annie made this mosaic turtle up high on the front of the house. Well, actually, she made it down on the ground then glued it up before the last coat of stucco.

Now we're around back. Note the cistern in the background and Sawyer the cat on the porch.	Sawyer grooming his unmentionable parts. How does he do that?

Come in the front door and here's what you see when you look straight ahead.	And here's what you see when you look to your right into the music room.

Turn around and there are the front door and stairs. Here's a good look at one of those Mexican posts	Then, if you go to the back doors and look into the living room, this is the view.

Look to your right and there are the dining room and breakfast bar.	Here's the view from the kitchen into the dining room and living room. The ceilings are long leaf pine bead board, salvaged from a one-room schoolhouse in Milano, Texas that was built in 1873.

Turning around, here's the kitchen. The cabinet doors and drawer fronts were made by woodworking genius Wolf, granite counters and tile splashes by Annie.	Here's the downstairs bathroom. Gorgeous tilework by Annie, natch.

Here's the guest bedroom, looking west.	And here's the same room looking east.

Now we're upstairs, at the top of the stairs.	Turn around and there's the ancestor wall...

which is next to our bedroom. That's Annie on the phone.	From the bedroom, you can go out on the upstairs porch.

Step out on said porch and look to the east. There are the cistern and shed.	Here's the rest of the upstairs porch with more of those Mexican columns and balisters of juniper staves, many of which we cut from the land.

Back in the house, we're in the upstairs bathroom. Again, all the tilework is Annie's.	Here are our double vanities - very handy when we're in a hurry, which is often.

Here's the catwalk and crow's nest, overlooking the living room. All the spectacular steel and copper railings were made by our friend Donna West. She may only weigh 90 pounds but she's no weakling.	Looking back from the catwalk, here's the loft. The floors are also long leaf pine, from that afore-mentioned schoolhouse.

Into the office. Here, we're looking northwest.	Same office, looking northeast .

Back outside for a few more wall details. Annie's mosaics honor some of the other creatures that share our

land: The blue heron, the deer, the snake, geko	and, of course, the armadillo.

One more shot of our favorite kitty, Sawyer.	And what he's looking at - the side yard.

Thanks for taking the tour. We hope you are very impressed with our first (and last) home building efforts.	Now, if you want to view pictures of our equally fabulous grandson Zac, click here. Or, if you want to visit our AiM Productions web site, click here. And if you haven't had enough, here are links to the archived former postings and websites: The October,2002 edition of the Pedernales Post The July, 2002 edition of the Pedernales Post The June edition of the Pedernales Post The April (and inaugural) edition of same The Susan Lee Solar Memorial site The Century Management site that we have built and maintain