In Highland Village (the subdivision), this single-story 1950 home with single-slot garage is 2 sidewalk-free blocks south of Highland Village (the shopping center). A somewhat-reconfigured painted-brick home remodeled in 2000, the property listed 2 weeks ago at $429,000. Its interior has an open living-dining area overlooking a patio and pool, and the entry-with-bar shares that view. Beyond the back fence runs an easement for power lines and train tracks in a no-horn zone.
Last fall, the restoration-minded owner of this stretched-out 1956 Mod by architect Lucian Hood in Braeburn Valley told Swamplot he was fixing to sell his property. Now, having finished reviving the redwood exterior from beneath the paint that covered it up and sprucing up the brick and ledge stone walls, Jason Jones reports his 5-year project is ready for its closeup, just listed, and now asking $365,000. The home is located on a big corner lot across from Braeburn Country Club greens — and next to Maison DeVille, a Mansard-roofed apartment complex from 1962, later converted to condos.
Everything above the roof ridge of this 1959 ranch-style residence in Spring Branch Woods forms a massive, single room across the back of the home. Listed last weekend at $443,000, the biggest-on-its-block property is located in Spring Branch Woods, just west of Bunker Hill Rd. The tree-lined stretch of Westview Dr. street has mostly smaller, 1-story suburban homes from the mid-fifties, including one across the street with the proverbial white picket fence.
Since 1984, this home-with-pool has changed hands seven times, HCAD records show. And it’s been remodeled a time or two. A roof-raising addition in 2000 made way for the aptly named “Great Room,” a 26-ft.-by-19-ft window-display showcase:
Over in La Porte, a Bayside Terrace home has — a bay-side terrace. The waterfront property has a panoramic view of Upper Galveston Bay and its existing spill islands and wildlife refuge. And that vista just dodged a soggy bullet: On Wednesday the Port of Commission nixed a plan that would have placed a 475-acre island of sludge in the bay in the middle of it, built from material dug up from dredging at the Bayport Container Terminal in neighboring Shoreacres, near the Houston Yacht Club. (The dredging will go ahead, but the material go onto berms at Atkinson Island instead.)
There’s a stuccoed Dutch-Colonial-Swiss Colony on the not-so-mountainous streets behind Weslayan Plaza’s west side in the College Court section (aka the “chimney”) of West University Place. The lookalike cottage and quarters are steps away from the new Buffalo Grille and a U.S. Post Office. West U’s Judson Park to the south and a proposed rail station for Metro’s supposed University Line are also blocks away. Railroad tracks, meanwhile, are just up the street.
During construction of the 1983 main house, a former 1940s “barn” on the site became a 2-story guest house in lieu of a garage. HCAD cites some remodeling in 1991 to the home. Last Friday, the property re-listed at $462,500 after a previous listing by the same agent initially sought $575,000 in April 2012, with adjustments to $565,000, $550,000, and then a summer of $524,990. The home’s side entry and hipped roof make for an atypical floor plan:
If you squint, this house sort of puts a party face on its facade, what with the eyeball windows, nose-like roof above the landing, and unfurled tongue of stairs. The 2-story-over-garage quay-side property is on tiny Tiki Island, which, at less than 1.5 sq. miles in size, is more canal than actual land. It’s just off Galveston’s West Bay and has 91 ft. of canal frontage plus 2 boat lifts. It listed in July at $564,500. The entertainment-in-mind layout includes 2 living areas, decks at 2 levels, screened porches, and a pool with hot tub off a covered patio. Inside the 1993 home by the bay, you’ll find more than earth tones:
The grass is always greener when it’s part of an overhaul. A redo (above) of this 1968 home in Forest West (at right) lawned-up the yard, boosted the landscaping, and thinned out the tree limbs. Then, the makeover moved inside, adding fresh paint, a new HVAC system, carpet, and 2012-ier finishes in the kitchen and bathrooms. The home is just a couple lots away from the crosswalks of HISD’s Clifton Middle School and adjacent Forest West Park.
The revamped property was listed earlier this week at $159,900, but in February 2012 it changed hands for $85,000. That previous listing’s initial asking price was $139,900 — in September 2011. But it tumbled every few weeks thereafter: from $132,500 in early October to November’s double-dips of $124,900 and $114,900 to holiday pricing of $109,900 . . . and a new year-new price of $99,900.
As mods go, this one in Tanglewood is just one of that neighborhood’s thinning pack of mid-century homes. What sets this property apart? Maybe the bomb shelter out back — and the property’s brush with Hollywood as a film set in Breast Men, the 1997 HBO David Schwimmer flick that finally gave Houston its due as the birthplace of the boob job industry. The mid-July listing of this property for $1.1 million calls the 60-year-old property on Sugar Hill Dr. a “wonderful building site” and leaves it at that. But preservation advocates at Houston Mod met with the home’s current, long-term owner and gleaned some tidbits to share about the home’s origins and features:
Talk about a gated driveway. This Lancaster Place cottage’s half-a-yard carport extends to the front sidewalk, with a double-garage door and entry gate punched into the lot-line iron fence. The combination gives the front yard a shaded pavilion as well as a parking area. It’s also the starting point of a partly-paved, partly-pebbled path to the front porch and an office in the converted, detached garage at the back of the lot. The 1910-built home has been updated several times, including some work in 2004. Since then, there’ve been big changes a couple blocks away at the corner of Dunlavy and West Alabama: A new H-E-B Market has replaced some apartments, and some new apartments are about to replace the just-shuttered Fiesta Mart.
The new kid on this otherwise out-of-the-Twenties block of cottages in Hyde Park is on the block again. Built in 2008, the property west of Montrose Blvd. and south of West Gray St. sold in March 2009 at $629,450 and again in September 2011 at $725,000. Last month, the HardiePlanked home on a 4,800-sq.-ft. lot popped up as a new listing one more time, asking $819,000. The house sits behind a fence with an automated gate across a double-wide driveway. Three crisply trimmed dormers rise above the 2-car garage and a recessed, at-grade porch like whitecaps on water. Just a few doors down at Montrose, there’s a convenience store and that 10-year-old, 14-unit, 4-story stucco condoplex known as the Renaissance on Montrose.
