Budget Breakdown: In Rural Texas, a Couple Build an Off-Grid Forever Home for $1.68M

Designed by Murray Legge Architecture, the courtyard house is topped with a jagged roof that harvests solar energy and directs rain to a giant cistern, where it’s filtered to become potable.

Text by

Rachel Gallaher

Photos by

Leonid Furmansky

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Jonah Sutherlun and his wife, Lydia, are a testament to trusting the process. After moving to Temple, Texas, in 2010 for Lydia’s physician residency training, the couple lived in a historic home downtown for several years but agreed that they wanted more space once they started having kids. Jonah dreamed of an area with woods, or at least a patch of trees—a tall order in much of central Texas.

One concession the homeowners made to save money was downgrading the exterior retaining wall from a gabion design to native limestone blocks.

"We started looking for land pretty much everywhere," Jonah says, "but a forested one-to-three-acre plot is pretty hard to find in that area." As they expanded their search, the couple landed on Belton, a small town about 10 miles west of Temple and an hour away from Austin. "One night, we said, ‘Let’s just look one more time,’ so we went online and saw a listing posted 30 minutes prior. Someone had taken an old farm and divided it into lots, and one of them was very densely forested. We went and saw it the next morning and purchased it the same day."

The roof is bonderized steel, which gives it a matte gray color, and the siding is Kebony—a thermally modified wood.

In another cost-saving choice, the couple opted to finish the driveway in poured concrete instead of stone pavers. The roof is designed to collect rainwater, which travels through a set of pipes to a 39,000-gallon cistern behind the house.

Jonah and Lydia’s $93,000 parcel of land—a sliver of the overall project cost, which had a fixed-price contract of $1,499,000 with the builders, Stillwater Custom Homes, but totaled out at $1,681,244—is partly sloped, making only the front half-acre easily buildable. They knew they would need a skilled architect to help them achieve their dream house: a contemporary, off-grid structure inspired by industrial and Scandinavian design. They also wanted a guest lodging that would accommodate visitors for long periods, but that was separate enough so that it wouldn’t feel like everyone was on top of each other. "My wife and I decided we were going to go all-in on this house," Jonah says. "We wanted to hire an architecture firm and do it right."

$93,000 Land	$3,000 Site Work	$99,149 Foundation
$169,443 Structural	$130,875 Wall Finishes	$9,149 Flooring
$89,500 Roofing	$4,520 Hardware	$32,259 Electrical
$45,432 Plumbing	$37,949 HVAC Equipment	$15,961 Landscaping
$32,102 Lighting	$122,697 Cabinetry	$14,500 Countertops
$54,636 Appliances	$50,547 Windows & Glazing	$33,956 Doors
$20,360 Millwork	$13,954 Tilework	$36,297 Solar Panels
$49,690 Rainwater Harvesting	$17,950 A/V & Security Systems	$13,410 Fireplace
$74,675 Pool	$4,750 Structural Engineering	$1,250 Topo and Tree Survey
$4,991 Power Line Burial	$16,100 Closet Solutions	$14,475 Pavers
$2,211 Damaged Window Replacement	$2,824 Cabinet Finish Replacement	$3,383 Smokeless Firepit Insert
$1,150 Forklift	$9,000 Loan Extension Fees	$356,099 Misc. Builder Costs
Grand Total: $1,681,244

The single-story, off-the-grid house in Belton, Texas, is a contemporary riff on a traditional, suburban ranch home. According to Murray, the contractor said they wouldn’t work on a residence with a flat roof—a detail seen in many of the architect’s projects—so he opted for a jagged, slightly pitched option to help with rainwater catchment.

Part of what drew the homeowners to this property was the lush environment, and it was important to them to disturb as little of the land and cut down as few trees as possible.

After interviewing several candidates, they landed on Austin’s Murray Legge Architecture (someone in Legge’s office had participated in the Peace Corps with Jonah’s brother). "Murray was the only architect we spoke with who seemed genuinely interested in creating something we wanted," Jonah says. "His first question was, ‘How do you want the house to feel?’ Our entire first meeting was over an hour of him simply asking questions to get at what was important to us. We also loved that, during our discussion, he offered cost-saving measures to help us maximize our budget and prevent us from wasting money on things we didn’t really care about."

The couple left the landscape behind the house natural. Oak and juniper trees dominate the plot, and forest critters—foxes, wolves, raccoons—are frequent guests. Due to Covid-19 supply chain holdups, the exterior doors arrived several months late, which, according to Jonah, resulted "in a raccoon being the first resident of our house."

Photovoltaic panels on the roof generate enough electricity to offset 95% of the home’s consumption.

Some of these measures included downgrading to non-custom cabinetry in the guesthouse, pantry, and closets, using vinyl for the dormer windows ("They’re hard to see anyway," says Jonah), forgoing heated, tiled floors in the bathrooms, switching to non-automatic blinds in the guesthouse bedrooms and living room, downgrading the fixtures in the guesthouse and pool bathroom, and opting for mid-tier lighting throughout the project.

The punch list of items the couple weren’t willing to compromise on included the off-the-grid features (a high-efficiency woodburning fireplace, a rooftop water catchment system, and solar panels, all of which cost $99,397, including consulting fees), high-end kitchen appliances ($54,636 for Wolf and Sub-Zero in the main house), aluminum windows, and roofing that clocked in at $89,500. "We considered downgrading to a lower-cost standing-seam metal roof, but ultimately decided that losing the matte, natural look of the raw paint grip roof would ruin the look of the house," notes Jonah.

The house opens to the central courtyard, where the swimming pool is a hit in the summer. The space is lined with Leuder’s limestone. "This was a place where we inverted the suburban house model, where they only put stone or brick on the front," says Legge. "Here, we put it on the inside. It’s a perfect square, and it acts as an anchor, but you can see it from all sides."

Even the water in the courtyard pool comes from the on-property cistern, which collects rain throughout the year. "Last summer, I think the kids were in the pool twice a day at least," says Jonah. "We lived in that courtyard."

Confident in Legge’s ability to design something architecturally interesting that fit all their family’s needs, Jonah and Lydia provided minimal direction. "He did a sampling of sketches and presented them to us," Jonah says. "Secretly, my wife and I wanted a house with a courtyard, inspired by something you’d see in Italy or Spain. We didn’t tell them that, but then one of the sketches came back with a courtyard. It was our favorite—and also the firm’s favorite."

"We went through a bunch of different organizational configurations, including a zigzag and a T shape with a pavilion," says Legge, "but the program of including two houses was always there. Once we decided on the courtyard idea, we again came up with different configurations before landing on a single roof connecting the houses and covering the outdoor spaces in between."

A covered breezeway connects the main house and the guesthouse. Here, Legge took the opportunity to play with perspective, framing part of a tree and the sky with an abstract roof cutout.

A bright reading nook captures the home’s color and material palette: polished concrete floors, white walls, and oak cabinetry. The windows in the reading nook (and also the kitchen and the master bathroom) are a more expensive, frameless model.

Viewed from above, the one-story residence looks like a perfect square. The two houses—a U-shaped primary residence and the smaller, rectangular guest suite—surround a central courtyard containing a pool, firepit, dining area, and grassy patch. The roof, made of bonderized steel (which goes through a chemical process to produce a matte gray color), runs in a square around the courtyard, connecting the structures even in areas with a gap between the buildings. The bulk of the budget went to structural elements: foundation work was $99,149; the framing, siding, envelope, and insulation were $169,443; all wall finishes—from drywall to plaster to wallpaper—were $130,875, and cabinetry was $122,697.

To add interest and play with the threshold between the interior and exterior, Legge created a unique roofline with various windowed nodes punched out to bring natural light inside, as well as openings over sections between structures. "We loved the idea of having views up and out into the forest," says Legge. "On one side, it’s wilder— you can see all the trees and the animals, such as foxes and wolves, and on the other side you’re looking into a controlled courtyard. That relationship is really interesting."

The primary bedroom has a single-material palette: pine wood. The light tone creates a relaxing backdrop for minimalist furniture.

The home office’s built-in desk has enough space for parents to work while the kids tackle art projects or homework—without feeling too crowded.

The roof is sloped to direct water to collection points, from which it travels through pipes to a nearby 39,000-gallon cistern, which serves as the home’s sole water supply. "Sustainability is important to us," Jonah says, "and the system will save us a substantial amount of money over time, as the general expectation is that the cost of water is only going to increase."

A rectangular volume in the kitchen holds an in-cabinet fridge, a walk-in pantry, a room with an HVAC system, and a powder room. The pine ceiling and oak cabinetry compliment each other, and the dark backsplash and countertops are practical choices that ground the space.

Black accents ground the light wood wall paneling, and the vertically installed subway tile adds texture to this bathroom.

The fireplace is a striking feature that the family uses frequently. It was an investment upfront, but it should prove a cost-effective choice as time goes on. "Our unit can warm our entire family space including the kitchen, living room, dining room, and office with a more than a 90-percent efficiency rating," the homeowner explains.

Inside, the house has a streamlined, Scandi-meets-industrial aesthetic, seen in its polished concrete floors, oak and pine woodwork, and simple, contemporary furniture. One highlight is the stacked-stone fireplace, where Jonah and Lydia love hanging out with their kids on the weekend.

Despite a raft of setbacks along the way—a foreman unexpectedly quitting, a framer walking out on the job, a cabinetmaker who had a heart attack in the middle of the project and moved across the country, and the ubiquitous Covid-19 pandemic supply woes—Jonah says he’d do it all again if it meant getting the same results: "The hours spent with friends and family around the woodburning stove at Christmas, the pool in the summer, and the dining table year-round have already been worth every dollar and sleepless night of worry that we spent."