Home Design
08/07/12 1:40pm

Compounding a Centennial Cottage in Lancaster Place

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Talk about a gated driveway. This Lancaster Place cottage’s half-a-yard carport extends to the front sidewalk, with a double-garage door and entry gate punched into the lot-line iron fence. The combination gives the front yard a shaded pavilion as well as a parking area. It’s also the starting point of a partly-paved, partly-pebbled path to the front porch and an office in the converted, detached garage at the back of the lot. The 1910-built home has been updated several times, including some work in 2004. Since then, there’ve been big changes a couple blocks away at the corner of Dunlavy and West Alabama: A new H-E-B Market has replaced some apartments, and some new apartments are about to replace the just-shuttered Fiesta Mart.

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Home Design
08/03/12 12:05pm

A Hyde Park Resale Repeater

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The new kid on this otherwise out-of-the-Twenties block of cottages in Hyde Park is on the block again. Built in 2008, the property west of Montrose Blvd. and south of West Gray St. sold in March 2009 at $629,450 and again in September 2011 at $725,000. Last month, the HardiePlanked home on a 4,800-sq.-ft. lot popped up as a new listing one more time, asking $819,000. The house sits behind a fence with an automated gate across a double-wide driveway. Three crisply trimmed dormers rise above the 2-car garage and a recessed, at-grade porch like whitecaps on water. Just a few doors down at Montrose, there’s a convenience store and that 10-year-old, 14-unit, 4-story stucco condoplex known as the Renaissance on Montrose.

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Homes for Sale
07/31/12 12:54pm

A Slice of Gingerbread From a Sunset Heights Period Kitchen

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Even without the flag waving as punctuation, this 1890 Victorian serves as a pint-sized Americana residential souvenir, complete with gingerbread trim and turned posts on the porch. The fence, however, is of more modern scale — and function, given its automated gate across the driveway. Flashbacks continue inside the cottage, listed earlier this month at $369,5000. It’s located in the Bartholomew Place tendril of Sunset Heights, a long block west of Metro’s Heights Transit Center.

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Briargrove Park
07/27/12 3:28pm

Briargrove Park Split-Level Is All Decked Out

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A Briargrove Park 1974 contemporary plays up all its angles. The multi-level floor plan carves out a few unexpected spaces inside and out, including a series of decks, patios, and covered porches. Listed earlier this month at $480,000, the piney-woods property is just off a cul-de-sac that’s a block — or 8 homes — from the noise-baffling wall of the West Belt feeder road north of Briar Forest Dr. That places it west of Seagler Rd., the dividing line between the neighborhood’s start in the sixties and its seventies’ buildout.

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Home Decor
07/26/12 12:29pm

Nassau Bay’s Purple Waterfront Playhouse

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It all seems so seasidey serene at this Nassau Bay property on the border of Bal Harbour Cove and Swan Lagoon. A mid-July initial listing, the 3-story $2.2 million property has water views from all its rooms. There’s a lakefront pool, a fire pit on a cantilevered deck, a pair of palapas, palm trees bending in the breeze, and a double-slip boathouse perched above the lapping waves. In the front yard, there’s a tiered waterfall. But inside, this rock-encrusted 2-story  waterfall-with-aquarium in the entry is the real tipoff that while the home is on the water, its interior isn’t a driftwood-nautical knot kinda retreat:

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Homes for Sale
07/24/12 2:00pm

Windows on an Updated Windermere Contemporary

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Ivy creeping across the mostly unadorned facade of this Windermere home helps plant the 1950 contemporary into its leafy and landscaped setting. Interior updates over the years appear to have kept the home’s mid-century bones while adding some modern conveniences — and a whole lotta windows facing the large back yard. Listed a month ago at $619,000, the home in Southgate’s hinterlands west of Greenbriar Dr. is within walking distance of Rice Village and Roberts Elementary School — or just a short ambulance ride away from the Texas Medical Center.

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Energy Corridor
07/23/12 4:50pm

Brownout in Fleetwood Home Near Energy Corridor

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Decorative panels mimic and emphasize the vertical orientation of windows on the front of this 1977 Fleetwood home just past the Energy Corridor. Around back, though, it’s all windows overlooking the pool. Behind the property, a shared alley provides access to the home’s 2-car garage as well as the garages of similarly pooled-up homes on the street. The alley also ups the distance between the back fence and the homes beyond it.

Last week, this corner-lot property resurfaced when a new agency relisted it at an even $312,000. The initial asking price back in February 2011 had tested the waters at an unusual $343,343, with a dive 2 months later to $328,328 — before throwing in the towel in October.

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Home Design
07/20/12 2:18pm

A Big Contemporary’s Curvy Build in Meyerland

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Gated and front-loading, this 1983 contemporary lot-filler throws a curve or two onto an otherwise straight-from-the-fifties street of ranch-style homes in Meyerland. Earlier this month, the stucco, steel, and glass brick specimen returned to the market after a 4-month break, with a new and lower price of $829,000. It’s a re-listing by a new agency. A previous listing for the home initially sought $975,000 back in October, but by January that price had dropped to $899,000.

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Braeburn Gardens
07/18/12 3:20pm

Braeburn Gardens Kennel Ready To Roll Over

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Leaping canines on a custom gate further boost the through-the-crate view of a property in Braeburn Gardens that has been home for 35 years to The Courtyard Kennel. The compound, once a show dog facility, sits on more than an acre. The assemblage of structures includes 800 sq. ft. of indoor-outdoor kennels and pet care facilities, dog runs, covered patios, and enough outdoor spaces and landscaping to keep 4-legged pets and their 2-legged friends amused. There’s also a 1955 house, a portion of which appears to have been a business office, and a driveway that, fittingly, doglegs across the corner lot.

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