So you think this week’s Neighborhood Guessing Game is tough? Sure it is. But it’s not impossible.
You want to see impossible? Try guessing the neighborhood of the home shown in these photos. This is a home we decided not to use for this week’s contest . . . for, uh, reasons that should become clear when you read all the way to the end of this post.
But don’t do that just yet!
Look at the photos of the interior below, after the jump . . . but stop scrolling before you get all the way to the bottom, so you can spend a minute or so testing yourself, to see if you’re the kind of Houston real-estate savant who really could figure out this home’s location, just by viewing images of the inside.
Swamplot readers are very sharp . . . but this has got to be impossible. Without seeing the pictures of the exterior (added at the very end), there’s no way you’d ever be able to identify the correct neighborhood. Well, okay — you might just get lucky. But there’s no way to figure it out, really.
Ready to see more interior photos?
Continue Reading This Story >
Read more about: Interiors, Neighborhood Guessing Game
A reader writes in with this report on the newly reopened McDonald’s at I-45 and N. Main, at the entrance of Woodland Heights:
It’s no “McStarbucks,” but it is different from most McDonald’s I’ve seen. The colors are rich coffee browns. There’s some fake zebrawood-looking formica on some walls, and a strange wallpaper-like tile in the bathroom. Right in the middle of the main eating area there’s a round structure that looks vaguely like a DJ booth. A bar-height counter juts out from it, where people waiting for their orders can rub elbows. The indoor playground in front is in a separate room. Sorry, no comfy couches.
How were the hamburgers?!!!?
Read more about: 77009, Brookesmith, Fast Food, Woodland Heights
January 10, 2008 – 2:42 pm
That house built out of shipping containers on Cordell St. in Brookesmith looks like it’ll be ready for delivery soon. Yes, this was a spec house — and yes, there already is a buyer.
Last year, Numen Development owners Katie Nichols and John Walker used shipping containers to construct the Apama Mackey Gallery on 11th St. in the Heights — because the gallery owner wanted a structure she can move when the property owner kicks her off the land. But the house Numen is building on Cordell looks like it’s going to be around for a while. It comes with its own, uh . . . doublewide lot, and it’s right across the street from a meat-processing plant.
After the jump: drawings, models, and an earlier construction photo of this neat little three-bedroom, three-bath, 1,851-square-foot package!
Continue Reading This Story >
Read more about: 77009, Brookesmith, Construction Materials, Green Design, Green Development, Home Design, Homebuilders, New Construction, New Construction: Residential, Shipping-Containers, Transportation
January 3, 2008 – 5:59 pm
We have an answer to last week’s reader question about the future of the Woodland Heights McDonald’s, at the corner of I-45 and North Main St., which was recently demolished. Miz Anonymous (”from the lovely and talented ‘Brooke Smith’ subdivision”) writes in:
Neighborhood prattle says that one of those new fancy McDonald’s, with earth tones, Wi-Fi and lounge areas, will be put up there. We’re calling it “McStarbucks.” Guess the McD franchise figures the neighborhood is going “up” after all. We hope that the 45-feeder bums will have to get their panhandled-dollar burgers somewhere else.
Another clue the burgers are coming back: the hood on the freeway-visible sign, which remains. If you haven’t visited the Willowbrook McDonald’s, see the prototype photos in this BusinessWeek slideshow.
Photo of McDonald’s sign: Flickr user Michael Schanbacher
Read more about: 77009, Brookesmith, Demolitions, Fast Food, Proposed Developments, Woodland Heights
Look what’s going up in Brookesmith: “Luxury Patio Homes”! Maybe this is what people mean when they talk about designing a home from the ground floor up—and from scratch. We figure the first floor started as a garage apartment, but by the time they got around to the second floor the concept had expanded to a more Heights-y Victorian. Onto the third floor and there were better ideas: maybe what we really want here is one of them apartment complexes? Plenty of room for the air-conditioning units on the roof deck.
Bonus points for the computer rendering that makes living in Brookesmith look like . . . a walk in the park.
Read more about: Brookesmith, Home Design, Homes for Sale, New Construction, New Construction: Residential, New-Listings, Patio-Homes
