Custom Barndominium Homes in Houston, TX

Custom barndominium homes are our main work around Houston: a steel or post-frame building, a slab, utilities and a complete interior, built on your acreage and handed over ready to live in. We plan each one for the real conditions here, including close to 50 inches of yearly rain, long stretches of 90-degree heat, and clay that shrinks and swells under the slab.

What turnkey means here

Turnkey covers everything between raw land and a move-in home: clearing and pad, slab, building, insulation, framing of interior walls, plumbing, electrical, air conditioning, drywall, cabinets, flooring, fixtures, and exterior work like porches and gutters. On rural land it also includes the septic system, water source and power service, which HomeGuide notes can push the cost of developing a rural lot up to $75,000.

Designed around how you live

Most barndo plans start from a mix of wants: an open kitchen and living room, a big covered porch facing the view you like most on the property, a primary suite away from the kids, a mudroom by the shop door. We take those wants plus the shape of your land and put them on paper before any steel is ordered.

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Built for Gulf Coast weather

The roof and walls go up as a tight, insulated envelope because humidity is the big enemy of a metal building here. We place windows and porches for shade from the west sun, plan gutters and downspouts to move water well clear of the slab, and set the finished floor high enough for the drainage on your site.

Financing paperwork

Texas Farm Credit describes one-time construction loans where lenders want floor plans, a supply list, contractor bids, a timetable and estimated costs, and plans stamped by a structural engineer. We assemble our side of that package so your lender has what it needs to approve draws.

Permits shape the schedule

A custom home on rural land runs through more offices than most people expect. In unincorporated Harris County a permit is required for all development, including buildings, grading, paving and fill, and the county cannot issue the development permit until the septic permit is issued. Fort Bend County requires a development permit for new residential structures of 400 square feet or more and asks for the recorded deed, a survey or site plan, a simplified grading plan and the septic design. Liberty County asks for proof of an adequate, operating septic system before it permits a building over 100 square feet outside the floodplain. We build those steps into the schedule so the slab is never waiting on paperwork.

Codes inside city limits

Some cities around Houston run their own building programs. Fulshear, for example, has adopted the 2015 International Residential and Building Codes and the 2014 National Electrical Code, and requires permits in its extraterritorial jurisdiction as well as inside city limits. A custom barndominium there is drawn, inspected and wired like any other house, and we design to that standard from the first sketch.