This Sensory-Driven Home Suits a Family of Four’s Needs

BY MAURI ELBEL at Austin Monthly

When Kim and Tom Hartman moved to Austin almost a decade ago, they found plenty of houses they liked, but not a single home that would suit their family.

“We have two children who have autism, and their needs are very different,” says Kim of their son, now 17, and daughter, now 19. “We ultimately determined that we needed to build a sensory-driven home because we couldn’t find anything that could meet all of our needs.”

After an extensive interview process with multiple builders, the Hartmans found Kelly Wunsch of Capital Construction Company, who helped them build a home that improved the way they lived and provided them with a newfound sense of freedom. “When it came to finding a builder, trust was the No. 1 priority for us because we were going to ask for some unconventional things,” Kim says. “We knew he would bring our vision to life to create our destination home, knowing that our children may be living with us for many years to come.”

Throughout the building process of their five-bedroom, four-and-a-half-bathroom house, which is a four-star- rated green home designed by Barley Pfeiffer Architecture, Wunsch not only understood the concepts that the Hartmans brought forth, but he was able to elaborate on them.

In the laundry room, the builder had the idea of converting a typical utility sink into a hair-washing station complete with a reclining chair to accommodate sensory head massages and grooming. For the Hartmans’ son, who can have difficulties at traditional movie theatres, there’s an indoor theatre room. Their daughter, who loves to be outside but can’t always tolerate direct sunlight, enjoys sitting out on the screened porch or adjacent covered porch.

Prior to moving to Austin, the Hartmans lived in Washington, D.C., and Michigan, so they wanted their new home to have a combination of the best features from each house. Wunsch was able to replicate everything from the ebony-stained white oak hardwood floors and dark wood ceiling beams to the wainscoting on the walls and handcrafted wood features found in the older homes, which helped ease the transition of another move for the kids.

Acoustics and light throughout the home are sensory-driven, preventing noise from traveling from one space to the next and filling the home with natural light without any direct beams or glare. Everything about the design—from the open-concept pantry in the kitchen that accommodates grab-and-go food for the children to the large swimming pool and spa where they can swim freely in the privacy of their own home—has made life more comfortable for the Hartmans.

“It’s not so much that each individual space is all that unique, but together, it really does check all the boxes for the kids,” Wunsch says.

The children have full reign of the upstairs with their own individual full bedroom suites while the flow of the downstairs allows Kim and Tom to be readily available to the kids while creating private sensory destinations for them.

“I’ve never lived in a house where I’ve been able to stand in the kitchen and see every single room in the downstairs,” Kim says, “This house will always be a part of our family’s fabric.”

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On the Pursuit of Perfection

By Alan Barley • May 27, 2026

I am an active creative. I actively demonstrate that by bearing new fruit daily. I don’t go to a dusty jar sitting on a shelf and pull out decades old preserved fruit. I actively produce daily the fruit of my creativity. It isn’t a choice, it is the thing that demonstrates who I am. One of the fruits I bear is that of being a musician. It’s the fruit I’ve been producing the longest. It’s taught me I can speak effectively through my hands, not with words but with musical notes. I can tell stories and convey emotion that way. Another is through Architecture. As I began my architectural journey, I realized I also speak through my hands, using drawings and sketches. It’s another form of communication, just without words. It’s how I’m made. I can no more do one without the other. I know that because I’ve tried. This journey has taught me that I’m not a prodigy (and I’ve known a few in both areas) but if I practice enough at what I want to do, with discipline and consistency, I eventually become a prodigy at what I am practicing. When I get to that place, I move from the mechanics of how to get to the solution, to demonstrating the solutions. We sometimes forget that we all are on the journey of being perfected, spending a lifetime pursuing it, but yet, never reaching it. It’s why you never stop practicing your craft beause it challenges you to be better tomorrow than you are today. The longer you pursue it, the more you understand how much there is still to learn. I say a prayer daily in my morning devotion- I ask God to give me eyes that see, ears that hear, and to have a willing heart, and to always have a teachable spirit. You want to develop a teachable spirit because as soon as you think you know it all, there will be someone you come across that’s further down the path of perfection than you are. Interestingly, they will feel just as you do- there’s always something yet to be learned for them too, and there is always someone further down the path than they are. We seek to be masters at what we do, yet there are no masters, only students, at different points along the journey. Once you understand that you never need incentives to get better at what you do. Once you think you’ve mastered something, you realize there are many more levels still to go. You spend your lifetime pursuing perfection ultimately understanding you’ll never fully reach it….in this life. But it becomes your daily work that gives you purpose and incentive. That realization becomes wisdom. It identifies and forces you to accept your mortality because you soon begin to realize there is not enough time to do it all. All that’s left to do is to keep reaching higher and never stop believing you can be better tomorrow than you are today. It’s more than enough to keep you occupied for a lifetime. And that is the journey.

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This Sensory-Driven Home Suits a Family of Four’s Needs – Austin Monthly Feature

The five-bedroom Steiner Ranch house features everything from a hair-washing station to a theatre room.