COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOUSE POOR OR FURNITURE POOR “Roche Bobois designs are a still a little too blobby (i.e., French) for my taste, but it makes [more] sense to me to buy a $400k mid century mod and fill it with nice Bobois furniture than to buy a $800k faux Tuscan Villa and fill it with Pottery Barn.” [Patrick, commenting on Internum Takes Over Where Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams Took Off]
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Home Decor
- 2410 Cleburne St. [HAR]
What’s missing from the set of images that goes with this Memorial Parkway brick 2-story? Only photos of the tile recently installed on the garage floor. Other than that, the listing does a pretty good job of illustrating the agent’s contention that this 1989 4-bedroom, 3-1/2-bath, 2,365-sq.-ft. home does, in fact, have “new tile throughout.”
Ever wondered what a little duplex on Dunlavy might look like done up as . . . say, a personal injury law office? So, apparently, did the folks at the Manginello Law Firm. Thanks to the go-getters in that firm, all the heavy furniture lifting has been done for you. And now, thanks to the partners’ apparent eagerness to move on to a different sort of space, the firm’s bang-up legal interiors work is on display. It’s all featured in this new for-sale listing:
COMMENT OF THE DAY: A COLOR ANTHEM “You know what? Pink is UNDER rated. I’m not being sarcastic. Its period appropriate. Its Pantone’s color of the year (Honeysuckle). If I had $695K I would ROCK this house AS IS! Except for the carpet in the bathroom. BUT i would replace it with pink rugs FOR SURE! Replace the Hollywood Regency furniture with updated pieces and this place would be badassssssss!!!! Why do people bag on pink so much? Because it takes a super awesome person to pull it off and most people can’t decorate beyond copying the latest Pottery Barn catalog. Pink is bold! Pink is unique! Pink is more than a song from Funny Face or Aerosmith!! Pink for the WIN!” [brilliant.girl, commenting on 1956 Ranch from Del Monte Says Yes to Pink]
Such a rosy disposition about this Mod Ranch planted in the thick of the Galleria area. The 1956 home jumped into the market late last week, beneath Photoshop-blue skies: a 3-or-4 bedroom, 3-1/2-bath spread fitted onto a 12,960-sq.-ft. lot with just enough room for a pool in back. But what about the pinkage? How serious a case do we have here?
COMMENT OF THE DAY: HE-MAN, YOU HAVE THE POWER TO SAVE THESE TURRETS! “This house will more than likely be torn down. It’s a shame, really, because it’s one of the most unique structures in town, but the list of people who, a) could afford the $300K price tag, and b) would want to live in a house that looks like Castle Grayskull, is probably pretty short.” [Stormy Blanco, commenting on Wichita St. Mystery House Goes on the Market Today: Your First Peek Inside]
After the Orange Show, the Beer Can House, and the Third Ward home of the Flower Man, probably no Houston home has accumulated more outsider-art street cred than Charles Fondow’s decades-long transformation of a former Riverside Terrace daycare center into a bubbling stew of half-timbered gables, turrets, and towering rooftop decks. The ongoing Wichita St. skyward expansion project had an air of mystery, too. In Jennifer Mathieu’s 2001 Houston Press profile, Fondow comes across as shy and self-effacing, though he had by then spent $300,000 and countless hours of hard work on his grand, mostly-DIY creation, inspired by visions he had collected from visits to exotic far-away lands like Russia and Green Bay, Wisconsin.
Fondow, who loved to travel, passed away in March after falling ill on a Caribbean cruise. His gotta-keep-adding home-improvement project had lasted 31 years. And earlier today, a for-sale sign went up on the property. The listing features a first public viewing of what everybody wants to see: the building’s innards. Could this place be just as weird and wonderful inside as what Fondow carefully assembled outside and on top?
- 14818 Chetland Place Dr. [HAR]
