Story by Kristin Finan
When Mark and Sunny Woelfel settled onto 3 acres of family land in Giddings in 2014, it was clear they were right where they were meant to be. “It was always a lifelong dream to move to Grandpa’s place,” said Mark Woelfel, a Bluebonnet member.

But as they researched ideas for building a home on the Lee County property, they were drawn to a particular concept: the “barndominium.” The word, popularized in the 1980s, is the name given to the transformation of a barn-like space into a home. In recent years, barndominiums are often built from a variety of metal-frame buildings. 

After removing an existing mobile home from the property, the Woelfels spent a year living on-site in an RV with three of their five children — the other two are adults who visit frequently — while the home was built. Last summer, they moved into their new Pinterest-worthy, two-story 3,200-square-foot barndominium, which centers around a sprawling great room and is adorned with lovingly restored furniture that has been in the family for generations. 

It was custom built by Exner & Snyder Custom Homes. The company, based in Giddings, works on both barndominiums and traditional houses across the Bluebonnet Electric Cooperative service area. Both styles of homes average about $135 per square foot, said owner and founder Jonathan Snyder of the company. The Woelfel house, however, cost roughly $100 per square foot to build. 

The concept of barndominiums (“barn” plus “condominium”) is not new. Rural homeowners have transformed wood or metal barn structures into living spaces for generations. In recent years, however, thanks to websites like Pinterest and home design shows such as Chip and Joanna Gaines’ HGTV series “Fixer Upper,” (which first featured a barndominium in 2016), the trend has gotten bigger and grander. 

Stacee Lynn Bell, aka “The Barndominium Lady,” has designed nearly 150 barndominiums across the country, including some being constructed in the Bluebonnet area.Bell, who is based in the small East Texas town of Cleveland 45 miles northeast of Houston, said that in the South, especially in Texas, “barndos” are typically steel-frame structures that often include a workshop or garage. They can be built within an existing metal structure or completely from scratch. They generally feature a metal, rectangular frame that has been finished out on the inside, meaning the inside has the feel of a traditional house but is centered around an open-concept great room. In other parts of the country, she said, wooden “pole barns” or engineered wood frame structures are more common. The exteriors of barndominiums can vary greatly, ranging from a traditional, barn-like feel to a more modern metal façade.  

Although the barndominium trend is nationwide, it is especially popular in Texas, Oklahoma and Georgia, the website barndominiumlife.com states. Although the cost of building a new metal-frame home tends to be comparable to that of a basic wood-frame home, people are drawn to the aesthetics of barndominiums and the fact that their design – which typically features energy-efficient windows, lots of natural light and spray-foam insulated walls and attics – can be as energy efficient as their wood counterparts. They are also more durable and resistant to heat, weather and pests than wood-frame structures, said Elliott Lukasik, owner of Pristine Designs, which creates floor plans for about a dozen home builders in Central Texas. 

Lukasik, who has been drawing floor plans for 28 years, has been asked to design metal-frame homes since the early 2000s. He didn’t regularly start hearing the word barndominium until seven or eight years ago. These days, he said, nearly half of the 100 plans he draws each year are for barndominiums, and most are in the Bluebonnet area.

“Originally it was something really simple, something cheap to get into, something to live in. Now, some of the barndominiums are Taj Mahals, big and elaborate and really nice,” he said. “If you think you’re living in a barn, it’s really not a barn. These can be more expensive than doing a conventional wood-frame build. It’s really what you want to put into it.”

Most Texans opt for metal frames rather than wood frames, in part because they like the look, Lukasik said. For do-it-yourself projects, metal-frame home kits are easier to assemble than wood-frame kits.  

The average barndominium buyer is looking for a home in the 1,500 to 2,200-square-foot range, although some go as big as 4,000 square feet. The most requested plan is a one-story rectangular home, Lukasik said, but upstairs lofts are also popular. 

Snyder of Exner & Snyder Custom Homes has seen demand for barndominiums increase in the past 15 years.   

The company works on six or seven barndominiums a year, concentrating on the area between Brenham and Bastrop. “The lending was really hard to get on them before, because the banks didn’t know what to do with them as far as taxing and values on the building, but they’ve become a lot more mainstream on the market,” Snyder said. 

They are popular in part because metal exteriors allow for less upkeep (you don’t have to paint them, for example) but the interiors allow for greater creativity. 

“You start out with a big main structure and then really you can build anything you want on the inside,” he said. “They can be simple buildings, but they can be super extravagant on the inside. It’s really about your imagination.” 

Most of the houses take 6 to 8 months to build, Snyder added. “We are a complete custom builder, so we are customer-first driven,” Snyder said. “We sit down with the customer to help them envision what they want and make sure they get the product they envisioned.”

Bluebonnet member Kathy Anderson and her husband, Jay Anderson, are building a barndominium outside Giddings with the help of Exner & Snyder. They expect their 2,200-square-foot home to cost around $300,000. The couple will live next door to Kathy Anderson’s sister. 

“It took me a long time to find a floor plan for what we wanted,” said Anderson, who hopes to eventually add a large garden, chickens and a small orchard on the property. “You want to maximize your best views. Don’t be afraid to draw it out on paper and ask a lot of questions. I had my notepad with me all the time. Think of questions and shoot them over right away.”

Bluebonnet member Christa Wilson, who lives in Cypress near Houston, dreamed of building a place where she and her twin sister, Corrin Wilcox, could retreat with their families on weekends. After falling in love with Brenham, the sisters purchased 7 acres there to build a traditional house they could share. Then they watched the “Fixer Upper” barndominium episode in 2016 and changed directions. 

“We wanted the big grand room that had everything,” said Wilson, who has five children. Her sister has three children. “We wanted a space for our family to hang out. It’s like a party barn pretty much.” 

Wilson and Wilcox, both former teachers turned stay-at-home moms, decided to be their own general contractors, purchasing one large red metal building frame from Mueller, Inc., a West Texas-based steel manufacturer with 33 locations across the Southwest. Construction of the building — which includes 4,000 square feet downstairs, half of which is the great room, and 1,000 square feet upstairs — took about four months. 

The barndo, which also includes a 1,500-square-foot covered patio, was ready in January 2017. Since the house can sleep 28 people, Wilson and Wilcox decided to rent it out when they weren’t using it. You can get a taste of their barndo life by booking a stay on their website, 12armadillos.com, or by searching “barndominiums” in Central Texas on home rental websites Airbnb or VRBO.  

Amanda Hart embraced the barndominium life well before it became a trend. She and her husband, Jon, a Bluebonnet member and welder, started hand-building their first barndominium on their 10-acre property in Winchester in 2005. The initial structure was 26 feet by 50 feet, half of which the couple enclosed to be their home, which they moved into in 2007. The couple used the other half of the building as a welding shop. 

“It was literally going to be a barn and a shop, but then we decided, ‘Why have this big space and wait to build a house later when we could just make this our house?’ ” she said. 

After their family expanded to include three kids, they enclosed the rest of the 26-by-50-foot structure for living space and started an 18-by-36-foot add-on completed in 2019. They also added a back porch, carport and another bathroom.  

“We had a kitchen and a living room, but we didn’t have anywhere to sit down and eat as a family,” she said. “We wanted to be together and we needed the additional space to be able to do that. I love it. To be able to do it yourself really gives you another level of appreciation for what you have.”

Hart estimates that hiring a contractor for the work would have cost twice as much.  

Bluebonnet member Dawn Hedgpeth and her husband, Jesse, also plan to embrace the do-it-yourself barndominium approach, downsizing from a 3,500-square-foot house in Dickinson, 30 miles southeast of Houston, to live temporarily in a 320-square-foot shed-house on 8 acres in Bastrop. They purchased the property because it has an empty 2,000-square-foot metal building they plan to convert to a barndominium over several years.

“We’re hoping to do most of the work ourselves,” she said, but they are working with Tello Welding and Construction of Giddings on the project. 

The estimated cost for their property and construction is about $300,000. The Hedgpeths have been interested in barndominiums for more than 20 years and are excited to work on the project. After living through hurricanes on the Gulf coast, Dawn Hedgpeth can tile and build cabinets.

“We’re in our mid-50s. We could just as easily buy a little condo somewhere and have money set aside and travel, but this is an adventure, and we like doing this sort of stuff together,” she said. “We get to do something together and say, ‘Look what we did. This is ours. We built it.’ 

Area builders in and near the Bluebonnet service area

• Texas Barnodminiums
• Exner & Snyder Custom Homes (512-304-8928)
• Tello Welding and Contruction (979-716-0343 or Facebook)

READ UP: There are multiple books about barndo designs and layouts online,  or read “Barndominium Lifestyle,” a bimonthly magazine.  

ON THE WEB: There are Facebook groups dedicated to barndominiums, including “Texas Barndominiums,” “Barndominium Homes” and “Barndominium Life” (by barndominiumlife.com). Texas Barndominiums has a YouTube channel where you can learn more. 

Home Kits, a do-it-yourself option 

Folks who want to build a barndominium but are on a budget may opt for a home kit. 

What does a home kit include? Typically a floor plan and prefabricated components to build a one-, two- or three-bedroom home including a bathroom, great room, kitchen, dining room and laundry room. 

How much does it cost to build a barndominium using a kit? Barndo home kits can be significantly cheaper than building a traditional home or hiring a contractor if you do it yourself. 

Pros: If you plan to hire help, expect to pay a general contractor less if you use a home kit. Kits cut construction time as well as labor and building costs. 

Cons: Home kits and what they include vary from company to company, so do a lot of research. Even if you plan a DIY, you’ll likely need to hire subcontractors for items such as a septic system, plumbing, electrical, fireplace and HVAC. On average, expect to pay $60 to $135 per square foot with a home kit. 

Where to buy: A few Texas-based companies that offer home kits are General Steel Corp., Absolute Steel Texas, Capital Steel Industries, Mueller Inc. and Texas Barndominiums. 

Sources: barndominiumlife.com and gensteel.com 

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By Clayton Stromberger and Denise Gamino

If you were born at least fourscore and seven or so years ago, and grew up in these parts, you may remember what it was like in 1939.

No one was in a huge rush back then. The highway speed limit was 45 mph — lower for trucks. More than half the state was rural. Kids in the country rode a horse to confirmation class. Air conditioning meant opening a window or sitting on the front porch with a hand-held fan from church. Screen time was for when the mosquitoes came back. 

To communicate with faraway friends and family, you wrote long letters by hand and carefully saved the letters you received. To make a telephone call, you usually had to go through a switchboard operator — someone like German-born Selma “Grandma” Schwartz in Burton, who’d been on the job 29 years in her big wooden swivel chair and kept all the party lines straight with constant plugging and unplugging of cords and jacks. Folks read the local weekly newspaper page by page, and each issue had a section to keep you updated on the important comings and goings around town (“Miss Martha Woodson, of Texas University, Austin, was home last week-end.” “Eben Price, of Waco, was a business visitor here Tuesday of this week.”) 
 
Somehow everyone survived without Twitter and cell phones.
 
At the country store, or the town café, people would stand or sit around and talk with neighbors and strangers about the weather or politics or how the Aggies were doing — and they were doing well, working their way to a 20-0 Thanksgiving Day drubbing of the Longhorns and, by season’s end, the national title. On the radio, if you could afford one, you might listen to Jack Benny or Bob Wills or perhaps Fred Waring and his orchestra; everyone would gather around when it was time for one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “fireside chats.” 
 
Kids buying comics at the town drugstore had new favorite characters to follow — Batman premiered in “Detective Comics” in May and “Superman No. 1” appeared in June.
 
The Great Depression, which had begun with the stock market crash a decade earlier, was slowly beginning to ebb and recede, and folks finally started to have a bit of pocket money. The minimum wage rose a nickel to 30 cents. Yams were two cents a pound at Dippel’s Food Store in Caldwell; a 28-ounce jar of Pure Apple Butter was 17 cents. When going into town, men wore hats and often a jacket and tie. Women wore hats, too, and dresses — nothing too fancy, and sometimes made at home, but they were part of what was considered proper attire for Main Street in the communities within the Bluebonnet service area. There was a lively bustle on weekdays and often on Saturdays as well. And it was a treat on a Friday night to see a movie at the Strand in Bastrop, the Sterling in Giddings or the Baker in Lockhart (showing the first week of January, 1939: “The Dawn Patrol” with Errol Flynn). 
 
The theaters were segregated, as were the schools, the water fountains and lunch counters. Slavery and the Civil War were still in the living memory of the area’s oldest residents. Lifelong Travis County resident John Crawford, who was 81 in 1939, could still tell a visitor about his early days as a slave on a plantation in Manor. He was a child when word came of the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, but back in 1939, he had detailed memories of the day more than seven decades earlier.
 
In 1939, shiny new automobiles enticed passers-by at small downtown dealerships or glided by with their large graceful curves and Art Deco grilles. They made the occasional surviving beat-up Model A look like a raggedy scarecrow in comparison. The new model Chevy pickups were touted in ads as “big, brawny,” with improved “Supremline styling” and front windows you could crank open. 
 
While filling up at Arbuckle Oil in Elgin, you might pull up alongside one of everyone’s favorite vehicles — the Blue Bell Creameries delivery truck, a refrigerated 1933 Chevy model that chugged up and down the country roads to deliver 5-gallon cans of “B.B. Ice Cream” to Lotta Cream counters in drugstores across the area. Lotta Cream booths — created in 1935 by Blue Bell General Manager E.F. Kruse to sell scoops inside local establishments — were your places to go for relief on a broiling summer weekend, all for a nickel a cone. On a typical Saturday in August, customers at the Lotta Cream #1 inside Mr. Schmid’s Savitall grocery store in Brenham consumed 110 gallons. 
 
Life moved at a calm pace, but changes were just around the corner. In parts of Central Texas where the night had long been lit only with moon glow, candles and kerosene lamps, electricity was coming. The Lower Colorado River Electric Cooperative (later renamed Bluebonnet Electric Cooperative) received a state charter to provide electricity to residents east of Austin in Washington, Fayette, Austin, Lee, Bastrop, Travis, Williamson, Caldwell, Hays and Guadalupe counties, thanks to the relentless work of a young Texas congressman — and future U.S. president — named Lyndon Baines Johnson. (Later, parts of Burleson, Colorado, Gonzales and Milam counties were added to the Bluebonnet service area.)
 
In rural Fayette County, Isabel Albrecht saved up and bought a washing machine when the electric grid finally reached her cotton farm in Willow Springs, 22 miles east of La Grange. That’s where she and husband Oscar also raised cattle and chickens. But even after home electricity, she still preferred to scrub clothes on a washboard.
 
War was coming, too, though that was still just a rumble in the distance. In July, an article in Life magazine asked a group of prominent journalists just returning from Europe, “Will there be war?” No, reassured Amon Carter of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and his colleagues agreed. But in September, as Fred Quitta (seen in the photo at right, top row, fifth from the left) and Edward “Toad” Smith (third row, second from left) suited up for their Smithville Junior High Tigers football game, German tanks were already rolling into Poland. Five years later, those two young men would join the heartbreaking list of those who had given their lives in the defense of freedom. Quitta died in the battle to take the island of Leyte in the Philippines from the Japanese, and Smith lost his life at Saint-Georges-d’Elle, France, just three weeks after D-Day. Tiger teammate Carl “Rusty” DeLoach (top row, fourth from right) served on the destroyer USS Black, survived the war, and returned to Smithville to work on the railroad and marry his high school sweetheart Juanita. DeLoach died in 2013 at age 86; Juanita, who had been by his side for 65 years, died 12 hours later in her sleep.
 
The Great War, known then as “the war to end all wars,” had started just 25 years earlier, and some of its veterans living in Central Texas were still in their early 40s. In fact, that terrible conflagration received a new name in June of 1939, when Time  magazine grimly dubbed it “World War I” with a gloomy eye to “World War II” building in Europe.
 
Other changes, as a tumultuous decade entered its final year: On Jan. 17, radio host and flour mill owner W. Lee “Pappy” O’Daniel was sworn in as the state’s 34th governor with great hoopla at Memorial Stadium in Austin with 37 marching bands and an attendance of 60,000. O’Daniel replaced James V. Allred, who late in his second term was nominated by President Roosevelt to a federal district judgeship. 
 
In Giddings, a new mural was unveiled on the wall of the U.S. Post Office. The artist hired by a federal New Deal jobs program had painted cowboys opening mail at a rural mailbox, including one who received a package of red cowboy boots. The painting shows mountains in flat Lee County, but the postmaster called the mural “a first class job.” New Deal post office murals were also completed in 1939 in Elgin, Lockhart, Smithville, La Grange and Caldwell. In Lockhart, the young men of the Civilian Conservation Corps were busy building a swimming pool next to Clear Fork Creek that later would become part of Lockhart State Park. Additional New Deal workers were building Bastrop State Park and Buescher State Park near Smithville.  
 
These moments and so many others live on in the black-and-white photos taken that year by photographers such as F.C. Winkelmann in Brenham and Harry Forrest Annas in Lockhart, who each had downtown studios for decades in their communities. They documented countless weddings, babies, funerals, group photos and civic events both grand and intimate. We are fortunate to have their images as we look back and wonder what life was like then.
 
Although the people in these hand-printed black-and-white images are frozen in time today, they lived these moments in color. For them, the days of 1939 slipped by one at a time, a bit quicker than folks wanted them to.
 
What was to come was uncertain. They didn’t know how the story would end, but their contributions live on in this particular patch of Texas that stretches from the San Marcos River in the west to the Brazos in the east.

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