Students construct home with hope

Kevin Gillian sat at a drafting table with a pencil and a few sketches.

“It’s hard to believe in five months this will be a house,” he said.

For Gillian, a Kansas University senior from Ellisville, Mo., and 17 of his classmates, a whirlwind semester of designing and building a house began Friday, midway through KU’s winter break.

There was no time to relax — the final design for the 1,600-square-foot house is due Jan. 16, the same day the rest of KU’s student body returns to class.

“It’s intense,” said Jessica Fishback, a senior from Florissant, Mo. “I was nervous for today.”

The students are enrolled in Studio 804, an architecture class that builds a house every spring semester for Tenants to Homeowners, a nonprofit organization that helps families make the transition from renting to owning a home. This is the project’s fifth year.

For most of the students, it will be the first time they actually build a large-scale project they designed.

Frank Louis, 25, a graduate student from Glen Ellyn, Ill., puts together a model for Dan Rockhill's Studio 804. The Kansas University class is designing and building a home for Tenants to Homeowners Inc.

“Throughout the whole process of education, it’s all theoretical,” said Frank Louis, a graduate student from Glen Ellyn, Ill. “You don’t have to prove your design is going to work. This is the only chance we have to see the final project — where we succeeded and where we failed.”

The students — all graduate students and fifth-year seniors — came up with proposed designs on their own Friday. They’ll compare them today.

Over time, they said, the designs should merge into one every student in the class can accept.

“There’s a lot of shepherding though the process,” said Dan Rockhill, the professor who started the class. “But it’s pretty democratic, as well. In the end everybody has to agree with what we’re going to do.”

Once the design is decided, students will apply for a building permit and start construction on the east Lawrence home, which will be built near 17th Street and Atherton Court. They’ll likely work 12-hour days, six days a week, to get the house completed by the end of the spring semester.

Tenants to Homeowners offers loans to people who make less than 80 percent of the median income in Lawrence.The amount varies depending on the number of people in the household.For more information, visit www.tenants-to-homeowners.org or call 842-5494.

This house — like the other Studio 804 houses — will include recycled materials from demolished houses and salvage yards to control costs. The entire project has a $90,000 budget, which is provided by Tenants to Homeowners.

After the house is completed, Tenants to Homeowners will choose a low-income family to live there and begin the home-buying process.