“Dual toilets in the Masterbath…very unique,” reads the caption on this photo in a listing for a Riverside Terrace home on Parkwood Dr.
But haven’t we seen something like this somewhere before?
Oh, yes.
But that just means this home, built in 1965, was way ahead of its time:
A Swamplot reader sends in photos from the construction site at the corner of Arlington and 10th St. in the Heights, where 7677 Homes has apparently been busy transforming a much-talked-about 1,048-sq.-ft. bungalow into a 3,128-sq.-ft. home for a new buyer. Reports our site snoop:
The back of the house came off several weeks ago, leaving between 600 – 700 SF of the original structure.
Now the forms for the new piers are in.
Architect and Swamplot reader Jeromy Murphy sends in a construction update on the house he and his wife — also an architect — are building for themselves at 502 Archer St. in Brookesmith, “not too far from the container house.” How’s the family project going?
Lori and I designed it together, proving that a husband/wife architecture team can succeed (as long as the husband just agrees to everything his architect wife wants).
One of those design decisions that came so easily: the 8-ft. Isis Big Ass Fan that’ll hang from exposed rafters on a porch overlooking a new retaining wall. The fan isn’t installed yet, but you can see the rafters in this photo:
FROM ONE EXTREME TO ANOTHER As all of Kemah knows by now, the latest beneficiaries of one of those “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” weeklong volunteer-fueled whirlwinds is the 15-member Beach family: “After Hurricane Ike, the Beaches moved from their damaged home at 1013 Delesandri Lane into two FEMA trailers, parked in front of their house. Last fall, they moved to the backyard, into an 18-foot travel trailer with one toilet. The hot water tank held just 6 gallons, and they had to make frequent visits to the laundromat and cook on a gas grill. . . . The Beaches knew they were one of five local families nominated for the show, but Thursday’s ‘door knock’ made it official. The ‘reveal’ is scheduled for next Thursday, when they’ll come home to a 6,340-square-foot, two-story house with eight bedrooms and 4½ bathrooms. The episode is scheduled to air in March. Plans for the home include an elevator, therapy room and rooftop solar panels. The house will be built to meet standards set by the Americans with Disabilities Act, with wide doorways and bathrooms spacious enough for a wheelchair.” [Houston Chronicle]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE ISLAND HOME “. . . In my home we use the island for kids art and crafts, having guests for drinks and or dinner, homework and home working, watching tv, etc. All this on top of the normal eating and food prep duties. In this way the island and the kitchen in general are taking the place of rooms such as a dining room, office, library etc that might have been included in an older home. In that case I think a good argument can be made that the room and the island can be expanded to fill some of the space that would have been taken up by those now obsolete rooms.” [Jimbo, commenting on Island Living: Inside the West U Cottage That Didn’t Get Away]
Realizing that Modern house fans may want a little gingerbread of their own this season, local online small-houseplan hawker Hometta is offering detailed instructions on how to bake a mostly edible version of the Draft House, a 3-bedroom, 2-bath model designed by the half-Houston-based HouMinn Practice. And the construction documents for this very small house are . . . free! Among the ingredients: dry mixes and peppermint sticks from the Whole Foods gingerbread chalet kit.
If you like how the sample goes together, plans for a full-size, non-edible version of the Draft House are available from Hometta too. But they’re gonna cost you.
Over on Lovely Listing, readers are noting the resemblance of this shiny new yet-to-be-manufactured residence planned by On Point Custom Homes for 1517 Driscoll St. to a certain alcohol-guzzling teevee robot.
Both do feature state-of-the-art home automation systems.
The posting’s author begs:
Oh please oh please oh please someone buy this house and paint it silver and put your TV antenna on top please please please
How about a view of that shiny metal backside?
Note: Story updated below. Stand by for . . . the turret!
One of the nicest things about Swamplot is that we all care about our neighbors! So when one reader sends in a photo of a unique garage-chimney configuration balanced carefully on a townhome near the corner of Ashland and 16th St. in the Heights, it’s only natural that others in our community will want to volunteer their talents and services to help the situation.
The problem: The obvious allures of lick-and-stick stone facing have left a Heights homebuilder with a street face that’s a little . . . attention-getting?
The solution: It’s nothing an architect can’t fix — with a fresh copy of Photoshop and a toolkit of contemporary design favorites! Here’s the completed rendering that was sent into us:
Gravity-defying efforts of a local builder inspired a Swamplot reader from the Heights to send in this photo from the corner of Ashland and 16th St.
Photo: Swamplot inbox
COMMENT OF THE DAY: FORM, FUNCTION, AND HOME SECURITY “Properly implemented, turrets *are* good. The problem in this particular case as well as with so many modern faux-Tuscan and faux-Chateau adaptations is that architects fail to incorporate functional support for modern defensive armament and surveilance equipment. For instance, no McMansion is truely complete without a remote-controlled servo-actuated Browning M2 machine gun hardwired to the saferoom. But that critical bit of hardware doesn’t do the least bit of good if the turret does not project out from the structure or if it is lacking a sufficient number of meurtrieres to ensure an adequate field of fire. Along similar lines, I question the lack of murder holes above the entrances to such homes; no McMansion should be complete without the capability to dump a vat of scalding hot oil onto Jehovah’s Witnesses at the mere flick of a switch.” [TheNiche, commenting on Comment of the Day: Beauty Is in the Intention of the Landholder]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: BEAUTY IS IN THE INTENTION OF THE LANDHOLDER “Houston is full of architectural bad taste, but it tends to be bad taste that politely pays obeisance to prevailing norms of bad taste. Hence the faux-Tuscan McMansion becomes a self-perpetuating meme. Developers keep building them and homebuyers keep buying them [and] because they see so many other versions of the same crap, they start believing that turrets are good. La Luz del Mundo utterly ignores the norms of architectural tastes in Houston (which are horrible but all [too] common). Its crimes against taste are unique and displayed with gusto. Unlike the buyer of a faux-Tuscan architectural travesty, the congregants of La Luz del Mundo don’t care what other people think. To which I say, right on!†[RWB, commenting on Freeway Church of the Eastex Holy Roaming Empire: Shining a Little Light on La Luz Del Mundo]
A reader accustomed to shaking his head when he drives along Greenbriar just north of Richmond informs us that the recently built “big, expensive monstrosity” for sale on that corner is now advertising its bank pedigree:
This long-on-the-market house/thingy now has large for-sale-by-bank sign slapped all over the very nice fence. This has all sort of ridiculous written over it: four car garages, pool, etc.
If a 7,976-sq.-ft. villa with 4-car garage for less than a million in that location sounds cheap, it’s because the building is actually 2 separate “townhomes” — each roughly half that size — with a “common element.” The $959K price tag is for the foreclosed unit at 2201 W. Main.
After a year-long run on MLS, that front unit is now listed as “pending continue to show.” Which in light of the ready-to-loan listing copy maybe isn’t so surprising:
FORECLOSURE!!BANK WILL FINANCE FOR 4.5% WITH 10% DOWN(BAD CREDIT OK)
COMMENT OF THE DAY: BUILD MORE WACKY MANSIONS LIKE THIS, PLEASE “. . . We need more of these. Think of all the design professionals and landscapers and carpenters and the rest that were employed to build it and then maintain it. Hell, the construction crews were probably large enough to fill one of those suburban developments that is now a ghost town.” [jost, commenting on You Love the Knight Life: Rivercrest White Castle Retreat]
COMMENT OF THE DAY RUNNER-UP: (DON’T FEAR) THE SCULPTURE “More gargoyle!” [wilf, commenting on Piney Point Village Megamansion: Now $10 Million Off!]
SECRET POWERS OF THE CORDELL ST. SHIPPING-CONTAINER HOUSE The Brookesmith home of Kevin Freeman and Jen Feldmann — fashioned from shipping containers by Numen Development’s John Walker and Katie Nichols — meets a national audience in the pages of the latest issue of Dwell: “The meat distributor [across Cordell St.] begins loading trucks as early as 5:30 a.m., but the couple imagines themselves as hipsters living in New York City’s meatpacking district, and that makes it okay. . . . The corrugated steel of the container that houses the master suite becomes a textured wall for writing messages in the home’s entrance. ‘When we were furnishing the house, I thought, “Oh no! Our fridge isn’t magnetic for Eli’s artwork,” but then I realized the whole house is magnetic,’ Feldmann says. ‘We’ve become magnet connoisseurs,’ Freeman adds.” [Dwell; previously in Swamplot]
