08/19/14 4:45pm

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Surreal artwork and rustic structural components left exposed seem to meld into a single composition within the Fifth Ward home and studio of artist Bert Long Jr., who died in February 2013. Fifteen years ago, the attached double-shotgun row houses had been painstakingly renovated (and combined) as the year-long thesis project of Brett Zamore, then a Rice University graduate architecture student. Long, who grew up nearby and was returning to Houston at the time, bought the property near the end of its transformation but before an art studio was added — for $30,000 $70,000 — and lived there with his wife, artist Joan Batson. The mixed-use property is located in the Pinecrest Court neighborhood near Wheatley High School, east of Waco St. and south of I-10. It was listed for sale this morning, with an asking price of $200,000.

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Home and Studio
08/18/14 4:15pm

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Note: The pricing history noted previously in this story was inaccurate. We’ve corrected it below.

From a pint-sized perch above a set of arched windows, saintly statuary appears to be keeping an eye o’er a updated 1925 Spanish Revival cottage near the Menil Collection. The heavenly presence might also guard against any sleepwalking encounters with the steep steps at the bottom of a flight of stairs . . .

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Twists
08/05/14 2:45pm

142 S. Tranquil Path Dr., Grogan's Mill, The Woodlands, Texas

142 S. Tranquil Path Dr., Grogan's Mill, The Woodlands, Texas

You couldn’t have built a home like this secluded, sprawling number in a woodsy corner of the Grogan’s Mill section of The Woodlands without really liking bricks. The washed-brick exterior sets up against an expansive brick driveway set in a tightly woven herringbone pattern. Inside, lighter brickwork makes some sort of bricky statement in most rooms downstairs. The listing in mid-July, asking $2.395 million, wants you to know that the 2009 home drew inspiration from southern Louisiana; perhaps this explains the decorative or structural lagniappe worked into each room’s features.

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From The Woodlands to the East
08/01/14 4:00pm

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Who — or maybe what — was Ike and why does his tree get a namesake street in the Augusta Creek Pointe neighborhood in Spring? Sure, there was the notable hurricane by that name, but Ikes Tree Dr., which slices through the semi-shaded 64-lot section of The Creeks at Augusta Pines golf course community east of Kuykendahl Rd. and north of FM 2920, was in place by the beginning of 2008. The semi-custom, non-gated neighborhood’s model home, built by J. Kyle Homes in 2011, went onto the market this summer with a $409,563 asking price.

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Do You Like Ikes?
07/31/14 1:45pm

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It might look like a neighboring property (in the background of the photo above) towers over an updated 1926 bungalow on Heights Blvd., but the addition is actually part of the mixed-use complex. Balcony-wrapped, the modernish appendage mashes up with yesteryear’s residential front-end, which is currently employed as a law office. The switched dual personalities (and dual purposes) co-exist behind a wrought-iron fence on the southbound side of Houston Heights’ main drag. Listed Tuesday, the combo offering has a $2,101,948 asking price.

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Heights Face, Yale Face
07/30/14 4:45pm

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Built in 1977, a sprawling, stucco and partially stone-faced contemporary home in the Piney Point Village neighborhood called Windermere endured a big update in 2010 — as well as some sort of 1997 rebuild. Last week, the property’s re-listing flipped a couple of digits in its asking price: It’s now $1.56 million, down from the $1.65 million initial tag from a 2013 listing. (A later reduction had fallen as far as $1.595 million before timing out earlier this month.) Served by a circular driveway, the corner pocket lot on lasso-shaped Windermere Ln. backs up to the Fondren Rd. dogleg north of Westheimer.

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Slides on the Sides
07/29/14 4:45pm

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So much blue in this home in Copperfield Middlegate Village. It’s in the swabs of color found in most of the rooms — or maybe the updated 1991 property is holding its breath? Its listing 2 weeks ago at $168,000 comes nearly 2 years after a previous unsuccessful effort aimed at $139,000 and an earlier failed market run in 2011 that started at $164,900 and ended 6 months later at $152,500.

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Blue State
07/18/14 5:00pm

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There are vintage, historical, and perhaps sentimental aspects of this place in Merlin Place, just north of Spring Valley: The listing notes the home was “modeled after” the owner’s previous property in Piney Point. And bits of old Houston, older Galveston, and really old New Orleans worked themselves into the 1995 custom home, which still has some unfinished rooms. Thursday’s listing of the Mansard-roofed property, located between Voss and Bingle roads and south of Westview Dr., has an $840,000 asking price.

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Saving Graces