- 20727 E Sand Hill Dr. [HAR]
Sign up for the Newsletter
That recovered 2-story mod at 8008 Colgate has been getting further retouching by the newest owners, Sandra Cook writes in this month’s Houston House & Home. The previously dilapidated house made HoustonMod’s Mod of the Month list back in 2014 after it was rehabilitated to a poop-and-mold-free 5,870 sq. ft. (scooping in a few upstairs patios behind new walls in the process). Above is a comparison of the main entryway — the top photo shows the space’s trendy new white outfit, while the same wall appears in blue below that following the 2014 redo. (The lower left side shows the space midway through those earlier reconstructive procedures.)
The house will be receiving visitors during the Glenbrook Valley Home Tour in October; here’s a few peeks at some of the new retro-ish finishes, if you can’t wait until then:
Re-Re-Mod-eling
THE NEXT BIG HURRICANE REBUILD WILL GO MUCH FASTER IF YOU START ON IT NOW Meanwhile, in Brownsville: Housing advocates in Dolly-battered South Texas have since developed a disaster response program optimistically called Rapido; new legislation (similar to a bill that failed in the last Texas legislative session) is in the works to make Rapido-style “precovery” response a statewide standard. The program involves the fast deployment of permanent 1-room housing “cores” that can be quickly assembled by local workers and then added onto later; the bigger component of the program, Leah Binkovitz writes this week, is extensive pre-planning initiatives in potential disaster areas, instead of what housing advocate John Henneberger calls “reinventing disaster recovery from a blank sheet of paper every time there’s a disaster.†Binkovitz writes that the program calls for preemptive outreach “to determine what kind of disaster housing would be most appropriate, who could build it, who would be eligible to receive it and what resources would be available. That conversation should even include whether folks want to rebuild in vulnerable neighborhoods and how to offer alternatives.” [Urban Edge; previously on Swamplot]
Some of the bloggers and photographers at clothing and trendy-places-to-go blog Wear+Where+Well (based in but not exclusively on Houston) have pulled together a long list of the mural walls found around town, complete with titles, artist names, photos, and the interactive map above. The list is annotated with an eye for photography conditions, as well as info on parking and on the likelihood of “indigents asking for spare change” nearby. The authors say the list will be updated frequently; info on how to submit new spots you think should be included can be found at the bottom of the document.
Map of Houston murals: Wear+Where+Well
Mural Mapping
Comically large ceiling fixture purveyor Big Ass Solutions (the Kentucky-rooted parent company of exactly-what-they-sound-like Big Ass Fans and Big Ass Lights) will be opening its first not-on-the-internet retail space in the West Loop II office-warehouse strip at 1224 N. Post Oak Rd., Mike D. Smith reports. A statue of the company’s donkey mascot will mark the company’s territory in Suite 120, between Yellow Rose Distilling’s whisky operations at the west end of the building and Appliance Parts Depot to the far east. The 1980s office park (pictured above in listing photo form) is nestled in among the cluster of business spaces and warehouses to the northwest of the West-Loop-I-10 junction, across N. Post Oak to the northeast of the all-in-a-row Edwards Marq*E complex, Awty International School, and Beth Yeshurun cemetery.
Here’s a quick peek from last week at work going on inside of the showroom-to-be, currently getting prettied up for the public:
Cooling It on N. Post Oak
- 26234 Laneview Dr. [HAR]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: SNIFFING OUT FREEWAY BILLBOARD FINANCE CATCH-22S 
“I wonder what the particulate pollution is outside and inside of this house during various times of day and year? I wonder if one side of the house gets dirtier and needs pressure washing sooner than other, or if there is uniform pollution around the house? I guess its better not to know these things, because that might lower the potential value and an cause an acknowledgement of some salient dangers. I, personally, would think less about the highway if the sign were gone. [But] I guess the income from the sign could fund your HSA account and pay for all the inhalers you might need to alleviate your pollution-caused asthma.”  [Duston, commenting on Poolside Freeway Billboard Comes Down As Westmoreland Queen Anne Redo Wraps Up] Photo of partially deconstructed billboard by Spur 527: Swamplot inbox
The exterior of the Lone Star Flight Museum’s new building is now taking shape at Ellington Field-slash-Airport-slash-Spaceport, per an update this morning from Ed Mayberry. The museum posted the construction photo above late last month, showing some of the walls now in place on the 130,000-sq.-ft. structure rendered below:
Blown Inland by Ike
The gospel-soundtracked video above, showing Wheeler Avenue Baptist’s plans to plant a larger sanctuary next door to its existing facilities, appears to show that new structure landing on top of the original Frenchy’s location at 3919 Scott St. The creole chicken chain, which announced last year that it would be pushing for national expansion to 500 locations, also previously announced plans to tear down the original spot and rebuild bigger, though the exact location of that rebuild wasn’t specified. (Just up the street, meanwhile, a Frenchy’s-connected entity called 3919 Scott Street appears to have purchased the entire city block southwest of the corner of Scott St. and Hadley back in 2009. )
The property at 3919 Scott St. was bought over the summer by the church; the renderings in the video (posted just this week) more or less match up to a few older depictions featured on Harrison Kornberg Architects’s website for the project:
Third Ward Chicken Prophecy
What’s that — up in the air, over Westmoreland and Spur 527? According to a reader, it’s the skeletal remnants of 3618 Burlington St.’s sideyard billboard, which has been coming down since some time late last week. The sign structure is shown on its last leg in the snapshot up top from Saturday morning (that’s out of 3 legs originally, as seen in the listing photo below that from the 2015 sale). Per the newest listing, the full interior and exterior blankout and makeover of the 3-story Westmoreland Historic District home should have finished up around last Friday.
- Previously on Swamplot:Â Freewayside Queen Anne Now Getting Whitewashed, Rearranged, Flipped for $2.4 Million in Westmoreland Historic District;Â This $1.8 Million Queen Anne Mansion on the Edge of Westmoreland and the Downtown Spur Comes with Its Own Pool and Billboard
Photos: Swamplot inbox (top), HAR (bottom)
Sign of Steel
- 19182 Laketree Dr. [HAR]
CONN’S SLOWS GROWTH, LOOKS TO SQUEEZE MORE FROM DEBT COLLECTION, MATTRESSES 
Previously investigated home appliance and furniture retailer Conn’s is slowing down on plans to add new stores in the wake of the quarterly net losses announced yesterday, Mike D. Smith writes this afternoon. The Woodlands-based national chain (which has about 20 Houston area locations and 55 in Texas) has scaled back expansion plans to adding just 3 stores next fiscal year, despite grander talk last December. Among the initiatives in the works to boost profits: pushing the store’s mix of goods toward more higher-margin items like furniture and mattresses. Also on the list: boosting customers’ interest rates on in-house loans repayments and adding more months to payback plans. National retail consultant Howard Davidowitz tells Smith that both ideas look like steps toward a more sustainable business model for the company (which has been threatened with a class action lawsuit by its investors for allegedly hiding profit losses caused by targeting customers with lower credit scores): “The reality is, that’s how people live,” Davidowitz said. “The question is, ‘How much am I paying every month?’ And that’s going to determine in their minds whether they can afford it.” [Houston Chronicle] Photo of Conn’s at 11051 Hwy. 290 in Spring Branch: Conn’sÂ
THE CASE OF THE SPECULATIVE RUBE GOLDBERG-STYLE LONG DISTANCE HOME ARSON ATTEMPT Meanwhile, in Kerikeri: Gag orders surrounding a set of insurance fraud and blackmail investigations have recently expired, bringing to light details of New Zealand investigators’ suspicions that British expat Chris Robinson may have burned his own house down while out of town in 2013. Investigators of the fire, which destroyed Robinson’s multi-million-dollar home and Mercedes, found burn marks suggesting a flame accelerant, as well as records of a remote login to a home computer on the night of the fire. Traces of the software program used to access the home machine were found on Robinson’s travel laptop, though he deleted the program the morning after the blaze. The investigators eventually presented a proof of concept video in court demonstrating one theoretically possible method of starting a fire remotely: the investigators cued a printer to print, which pulled down a sheet of paper which was taped to a string, pulling a switch that caused a small heating element to set some matches on fire (enough to ignite the accelerant that appeared to have been splashed around the house). The case fell apart because investigators didn’t produce evidence of a sent print command; though the insurance company still won’t pay out for the house, Robinson was acquitted. He did, however, lose an associated court case over an attempt to blackmail the insurance company; during sentencing, the judge took into consideration a previous UK conviction for posing as an Irish priest to solicit-slash-extort donations to a nonexistent charity. [Stuff via The Independent]
As of tomorrow morning, any missed-the-memo visitors to the former Blank Slate Laser Tattoo Removal space at 1720 Houston Ave. will at least have the option to drink to forget (assuming that’s not what got them into trouble in the first place). Spanish-Latin-American-themed cafe Cafeza will open to the public around 6 a.m. with coffee, food, and wine on the menu. The shop is tucked into northern storefront of the 1925 building at the corner with Crockett St., with Belgium-minded companion Cafe Brussels occupying the adjacent space next door. The view above is from the Crockett side, where the scribbles-welcome Grateful Heart chalkboard hangs out these days:
European Influences on Houston Ave
The letters strung out under the Red Line overpass at Burnett St. and N. Main to label the area as Hardy Yards are now back in place once again, Chris Andrews notes. After a few ups and downs earlier this year the letters were removed altogether for a bit; they’re now back in place, standing on what appear to be some slightly buffed-up legs. The ones shown above are on the north side of Burnett; here’s the southern companion piece, with the stairs leading to the Burnett Transit Center visible on the left:
Knocked Down, But Up Again
