COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHY HOMEBUYERS REALLY WANT BEIGE “it is understandable why people would want neutral colors though. moving into a home is a huge price shock and it can take a while until people save enough to throw down for all the interiors as they choose. i would certainly prefer to live with neutral colors until the time comes to change rather than someone else’s preferred color of choice. it’s not necessarily a lack of creative thinking in buyers, but often a choice of practicality.” [joel, commenting on Comment of the Day: Staging Is for Wusses]
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Home Decor
COMMENT OF THE DAY: STAGING IS FOR WUSSES 
“yeah, we are fun people to know. this was my mom’s amazing project, so much fun to see it take shape. if you’d seen it BEFORE the makeover, THAT was tacky. what do you expect us to do, waste money redoing the whole house just to sell it? i’ve lived there my whole life, love it to death. cream colors? BORING!” [prudoodle, commenting on Magenta Is the New Fuschia: A River Oaks Home That Glows Inside]
Just what is it that gives this Sweetwater chateau that authentic French je ne sais quoi? Could it be the multipurpose wine room? The big-enough-for-giant-pancakes breakfast area? The Vince Young seal of approval? No telling if any actual chateaus were harmed in the making of this grand home, but that’s all likely ancient history anyway — this place dates from the last century!
Listed earlier this week for just under $3.5 million, this little cul-de-sac palace backs up to the grounds of the Sweetwater Country Club and packs in 4 full bedrooms and 3 full and 3 half baths — all in just 7,744 sq. ft. Many delights await you in this photo tour:
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHERE’S THE RED PIANO? “The whole time I was looking at the pictures I was trying to spot Elton John.” [Hugo Rodriguez, commenting on Magenta Is the New Fuschia: A River Oaks Home That Glows Inside]
It only went on the market yesterday, but Swamplot readers are already gawking at this house on Locke Ln., across Eastside St. from the Lamar-River Oaks shopping center. The 3-bedroom, 3 1/2-bath number is listed for $1,089,000, and sits on a 10,147-sq.-ft. corner lot. What’s to look at?
COMMENT OF THE DAY: JUST ANOTHER WOODSIDE GARAGE EMERGENCY OUTPOST “Is that a chalk board I see in the third to last picture? If so, no wonder why cops and EMT types are interested in this place. Maybe they can hold roll call in the den.” [bgreen, commenting on At Loop’s Edge: A Bit of Woodside from 1958]
You’d probably heard that the whole Tuscan thing was big up in the northern burbs, but did you imagine it this big? This “Outstanding 15 Century Tuscan Custom Home” in the gated Legends of Augusta Pines development — with garage space for 5 cars — was listed last week for $1,499,000. It’s hard to imagine any size person that wouldn’t fit in this home — though actual Tuscan giants might want to upsize the furniture and bathroom fixtures:
What’s hiding behind the gates at this brand new listing in The Woodlands? Oh, can’t it just be a surprise? What you’re working with: 6-7 bedrooms (one of those in a separate apartment), 6 1/2 baths, and a 4-car attached garage. An unmentionable amount of square footage on a 35,588-sq.-ft. lot. And a private dock at the stub end of one of Lake Woodlands’ many splayed fingers. All dating from 1990.
Don’t you want a peek?
COMMENT OF THE DAY: GOING HEAVY ON THE RANCH DRESSING “Wow. That’s a LOT of ‘updating.’ I propose a new word: ‘McRanchsion’ where a MCM-ish tract house is remodeled to within an inch of its life.” [marmer, commenting on Just Listed: A Wall-Free Maplewood Kitchen]
Yeah, that’s an outdoor kitchen wrapped around a tree in the back yard of this home that’s just gone up for sale in Maplewood. ’Neath the leaves: 2 grills, a wine chiller, a refrigerator, and a stainless steel sink. And inside? A whole lot more . . . plus carpet:
Even Later Update, 1:05 pm: A city permit official tells Swamplot she’d assume from the way the permit is written that it covers the demolition of all 3 structures on the property. But the inspector who wrote the annotation can’t be reached today.
Later Update, 10:01 am: All right, this is a little weird, but we’re going to have to retract the confirmation below. A demolition on this site is scheduled, but it’s possible it does not include all the structures.
Update, 8:50 am: We’ve confirmed it. The entire French estate (well, this one) is coming down.
As one version of the legend goes, in the mid-1960s strip-mall mogul and multi-millionaire Jerry J. Moore had this 18th-century château disassembled and shipped from the French countryside to Friar Tuck Ln. in Houston’s Sherwood Forest, where it was painstakingly rebuilt, brick by brick. Except, of course, Moore wasn’t the home’s original owner by more than a decade; and 8 years ago when he first tried to sell it (at first for $18 million, then $12.5 million), the real estate agent was careful to describe the 3-story concoction as a miniature “residential scale” reproduction of the French mannerist Palace of Fountainebleau outside Paris, as envisioned by local architect Armon E. Mabry. Oh — and the little Memorial-ish palace isn’t made of brick, anyway. Its exterior is limestone.
But that’s limestone quarried in France, “assembled with precision by French craftsmen,” Martha Turner Properties agent Marlene Rhoden explained to the Houston Business Journal in 2003. And the slate roof tiles — those came from France too!
Whatever its old-world pedigree, the home received a demolition permit on Thursday. Whether that permit covers turning the entire 12,734-sq.-ft. estate into rubble or just the whisking away of its 26-car air-conditioned garage — where Moore stored a tiny portion of his considerable antique-car collection — public records don’t say. But no renovation work has been permitted on the property, and the sewer line has already been disconnected.Â
Maybe the chateau is just being carefully packed up for a move to Phoenix or Atlanta, or a return trip over the pond? Nice try, but the demolition contractor hired for the job isn’t exactly known for his careful disassembly work.
It sure looks like this is it. How’d such a classic Houston real-estate legend come face-to-face with such a classic Houston ending?
The subdivision for this home on Meineke St. on Houston’s southeast side carries the intriguing name of “Freeway,” but most of you will just call it Gulfgate. It’s only a block south of the South Loop, and Gulfgate Center is just a mile to the east. The home is listed as the official address of All Purpose Plastering, but the for-sale listing has been plastered on MLS for only a couple of days.
The 3-bedroom, 1-bath house was built in 1960 and measures a little more than 1,000 sq. ft. But look what you can fit inside:
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHERE’S MY FLORENCE NIGHTGOWN? “That closet – omg! – I could live in just that space! But the trouble with such thematic interiors is that your furnishings have to coordinate with it. Certainly none of your prized artwork could ever hang in there. You’ll probably feel your wardrobe isn’t quite right for the house. And your dumb dog doesn’t quite fit in either. (The cat under the pool table looks nervous.) It’s just too much stress to match your surroundings.” [movocelot, commenting on Huckleberry Tuscan: Unloading the New Farmhouse in Town]
A representative of Margie Beegle Sales expects this two-story home in Southgate across the street from Rice University to hit the market next month. If you’re interested in a sneak preview of the home or would enjoy the opportunity to participate in the frenzied dismantling of the rather astounding collection of collections mounted inside, here’s your chance. The estate sale at 2141 University Blvd. is this weekend. Looking for a Kabuki mask or a vintage Hell Driver Rodeo racetrack? You’re in luck! A few more featured items from among the assembled treasures: KISS Psychic Circus action figures, some rather large Nutcracker figurines, and two full size mirror-image representations of Cracker Jack’s blue and white logo-man Sailor Jack with his dog Bingo. A much abbreviated preview of the scene:
BRUSHING IN THE OLD EUROPE 
Art-school graduate, grinder, and faux finisher Michael Bise pays the bills: “Last week for instance, I found myself in front of an eight-foot tall, three-panel window (of which there were 18 total) brushing blue milk-paint (a sturdy, old-master-y kind of paint made from lime—not the kind used to flavor Mexican beers, but the kind used to dissolve dead hookers—and cottage cheese, the delicious curdled-milk treat), which requires three or four applications of slightly different blues, each layer requiring sanding before the subsequent application, with a final application which necessitates a vigorous once-over with steel wool, leaving your arms and face covered in a fine layer of blue lime and steel shavings and your nostrils crusty with black boogers.
This process yields the rough equivalent of a tastefully aged barn door, on a barn next to a cottage in the French countryside, if the barn were to have a Bentley parked in it with the sounds of Aryan children splashing around in a nearby lap pool echoing off its rough timbers. The other mainstay of fauxing consists of creating an approximation of Venetian plaster on top of good old Texas drywall. This is about as labor-intensive as hanging and floating the drywall in the first place. The “Venetian plaster†is made out of standard drywall mud from Home Depot mixed with paint tint and a few secret ingredients to make it smoother and shinier. The key of course is in the application. My partner Joe and I have dubbed this well-guarded application secret “punch, punch, drag.†This is the same application process used in every Mexican restaurant in Texas, but, as in all things, the devil is in the subtlety of the details. Some clients prefer their plaster to approximate the walls of Castle Dracula while others, perhaps having read Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice (or maybe not), seek a subtler version of decay. Ultimately, whether wood, plaster, concrete, or beam, the most essential aspect of my job is making new stuff look old.
It’s an amazingly stupid job when you think about it (and you don’t have to think very hard to realize how stupid it is). . . .” [Glasstire] Photo: Michael Bise
