09/23/11 4:36pm

Fashion designer Tina Knowles put her Houston estate on the market this week — just days after the London Fashion Week launch of her and daughter Beyonce’s House of Deréon International Collection at Selfridges. Coincidence? Yeah, more than likely. The fashion line of women’s clothing and bedding is named after Knowles’s mother and Beyonce’s grandmother, Galveston seamstress Agnèz Deréon (later Agnèz Beyincé). Knowles founded the House of Dereon line with her daughter in 2004 — the same year she bought this property in the gated Memorial-area neighborhood of Farnham Park off San Felipe, west of Voss.

Boasting 5 bedrooms, 5 full and 2 half baths, and the sort of charming, quasi-institutional exterior that could only have sprung from the 1970s, the home is listed at a dollar under $3.5 million. Inside, it’s been done up this way:

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09/15/11 1:55pm

This home nestled on the south bank of Buffalo Bayou north of Woodway and just outside the West Loop has made brief appearances in the MLS for the last 2 fall seasons. This time, though, the price is almost $200K lower. It’s a 4-bedroom, 3-1/2-bath open-plan home designed by William Floyd in 1954, sporting a few obvious updates and alterations. The 3,519-sq.-ft. home is now on the market for $1,299,000; it’s just a few doors down from the home fellow architect Preston Bolton built for himself on Pine Hollow Ln. 16 years later.

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09/15/11 9:06am

How design blogger Joni Webb’s Calacatta slabs have been acclimating themselves to West U.: “Is white marble really practical in a kitchen? Yes, that age old question. Doesn’t white marble stain? I’ve had my marble countertops for almost three years now and I have to say, I don’t have any stains at all. But, what I do have are a few smudges. You can’t really see them unless you look sideways in the sunlight – and then you might notice that there are – for lack of a better word – smudges. These spots look like clear water dried on the marble. I know that all I need to do is get the marble cleaned and resealed again, but truthfully, these few marks don’t bother me at all.”

Photo: Cote de Texas

09/14/11 7:01pm

COMMENT OF THE DAY: SHARON TYLER’S TILES “I have to agree this house is over the top and she went ‘architect’ nuts with it. I actually live in one of the few other houses that Sharon Tyler built in West U. She built a few others and acted as the ‘architect/builder.’ I have to say the house is built super solid and has a timeless design to it. The bathrooms did have the Sharon Tyler signature floor to ceiling 2×2 tiles and that got old as soon as the 90s hit. Hoewever, in one of the bath remodels I brought a tile vendor to give me a quote to knock down all the tiles and put something more current. The guy liked the Sharon tiles so much that I thought he was going to hit me with a bat for wanting to tear them down. So to each its own. However, I have to say that having lived in a Sharon Tyler house, I have the outmost respect for that woman. No detail was overlooked and I understand she oversaw the construction herself and it was not uncommon for her to stop at the construction and asking to start from scratch on a particular job if she was not pleased with the work. And it shows, the house is solid quality construction.” [west u rez, commenting on Living Large in Houston, Before Her Homes Got Not So Big]

09/13/11 12:12pm

Also in the brand-new listing for a single-story “patio home” designed for the original owner by Preston Bolton off Yorktown: photos of the 2-bedroom, 2-bath pad from closer to its 1971 debut. If the now-empty home and its original blue kitchen don’t convey quite the air of Watergate-era sophistication you were looking for, try picturing yourself relaxing, internet-free, in the included black-and-white views. The 2,630-sq.-ft. home’s roof, AC, electrical panel, and water heater have all been replaced recently, but almost everything else is still as it was:

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09/12/11 10:39am

Just reduced a smidge: This 2-story four-squarish renovated 1914 home in Eastwood, just southwest of Eastwood Park. A few blocks north at Harrisburg and Lockwood, a light-rail station for Metro’s new East End line is supposed to open sometime around the home’s 100th-birthday mark. A porch wraps around the house, behind a front fence and driveway gate. And inside — a careful photographer has made sure you’ll notice — you’ll find lots of well-saturated colors.

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09/08/11 2:43pm

Note: Update below.

The hip roof on this 1958 modern home in Knippwood is only 7 years old, but whether it had a different shape originally isn’t clear from the outside photos — they stand back from the building on its 17,120-sq.-ft. lot. There’s no seller disclosure available, and the place is being sold “as is.” What will you find inside?

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08/26/11 6:49pm

This Lucian Hood-designed Midcentury Mod across the street from the Braeburn Country Club in Braeburn Valley hasn’t exactly been listed for sale anywhere yet — well okay, the owner has shown it off on HAIF. But Jason Jones says he’d be willing to part with it for, oh, $298,000. After he finishes patching and painting and getting it all ready for sale, that is. Over the last 5 years, Jones says, he’s done a bit of foundation work and put in a new 3-phase AC system and a new roof, but the home is still sporting the same 3 bedrooms and 2 baths it started out with in 1956.

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08/19/11 5:33pm

Inspired, perhaps, by Andrea Grover’s transformation of a former church just down the street into the Aurora Picture Show microcinema (it’s now called 14 Pews), the sellers of the 1960 vintage Community Gospel Church at 608 Aurora St. have now taken to the residential real estate market to unload their 8,190-sq.-ft. building on a 17,880-sq.-ft. Sunset Heights corner lot. Yes, says the listing, this unique property could be converted to a “1-of-a-kind magnificent show home,” or several single-story condos, or — and we quote — “just use land if you have no imagination.” (Bravo!) Among the itemized suggestions for the 80-ft.-by-42-ft. sanctuary, which seats 275 devout worshippers: “fabulous” media or game room; quarters or (very large) mother-in-law apartment; “party room,” or — yes — personal bowling alley. Here it is:

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08/15/11 1:50pm

CAN’T SHOWHOUSE YET What can HBJ reporter Jennifer Dawson tell you about the filming she attended over the weekend of 2 Meritage model homes in Fall Creek, for a new HGTV show called Showhouse Showdown? Not a whole lot. Five rooms in each of the 3,000-sq.-ft. houses on Robbie Creek Ln. had been decked out over a period of 3 days by a different interior designer, each wielding a $50,000 budget. The first 150 attendees got to vote on a winner: “I was game for standing outside in the heat, because I was eager to see who won the competition. But, no such luck. HGTV shot the reveal segment twice. Once as if the decorator of House A won. And once as if House B’s designer won. That’s a sure-fire way of making sure the cat doesn’t get out of the bag before the show airs. The producers also didn’t want the designers’ names revealed before the show airs, terms I agreed to. We also weren’t allowed to take pictures inside the houses.” [BizBlog] Photo of “Windrose” model used in competition: Meritage Homes

08/11/11 2:02pm

STILL NO WAY TO DECORATE WITH BACK ISSUES High Gloss, Houston’s entry in the online-only-but-still-magazine-style shelter mag craze, is folding after its third issue, published just last month. Founder, editor in chief, and former Houston high-school Spanish teacher Paloma Contreras calls shutting the publication “a difficult decision” in her announcement but notes only “a few lifestyle changes” within the magazine’s production team. [La Dolce Vita]