- 20 Bayou Shadows St. [HAR]
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Interiors
- 1201 Hector Ave. [HAR]
Stand next to the fridge on the first floor of this 2201 Southgate house from architect Dillon Kyle and you’ll see the whole thing: the kitchen with adjacent wine closet and the living and dining rooms to their right, fronting a row of glass windows that look straight out onto the pool at the eastern edge of the property. The price rounded down today from $1.75 million to $1.7 flat on the 3,376-sq.-ft. shed- and butterfly-roofed structure, viewed above from the north on the corner of Southgate and Montclair Dr.
A view from behind the couch’s elbow shows where you enter the place:
The Entertainer
- 1401 Post Office St. [HAR]
The Fish ’n Flush toilet-tank aquarium can’t support life without a connection to a power outlet — unavailable in this particular guest bath — but that didn’t stop the owners of the 3-bedroom at 3838 Southmore from extending the piscine theme to the rest of their bathroom after moving into the home. The couple bought the house in 2016 and renovated the room, which was previously featured on Swamplot. Having documented the work on their own blog, they now send these photos in an update on the porcelain apparatus.
The photo below shows the bathroom with new wainscoting, navy paint, and two framed fish renderings hanging above the window next to the shower. To the right of the window, the toilet sits in a separate room:
Water Feature
- 10011 Orangevale Dr. [HAR]
- 2814 Meadowcreek Dr. [HAR]
- 27 Beacon Hill [HAR]
How’s this for a twisting story line? An architect commissions a famous artist to create a site-specific drawing in a house he has built for himself. The artist, who never touches his own works, creates exacting instructions that installation artists follow to create the 30-ft.-tall artwork in the living room of the home. The artist dies. A few years later, the architect dies, offering his home and the majority of his extensive art collection to a local but world-famous museum of which he was a trustee. The museum decides to sell the home and add much of the art to its collection, but there’s a problem with the wall drawing. It can’t be moved, and the museum is stymied by a restriction: It is not allowed to sell any artwork that has been bequeathed to it.
Here’s where the plot — and the drywall mud — thickens: the museum, unable to remove the artwork from the home without destroying it, comes up with an alternative plan. It will plaster over the drawing, rendering it unrecoverable.
Years later, the purchaser of the home is telling this story to a houseguest — who in a fit of curiosity grabs a dull knife and starts chipping away at the wall. The white coating flakes off. To his and his host’s surprise, a tableau of blue, red, and yellow appears: a fragment of the original drawing underneath.
What is this? The first 20 minutes of a new Wes Anderson movie, an episode of Columbo, or the setup for a Siri Hustvedt novel? No, its just the state of play at 1202 Milford St. in the Museum District. The artist is Sol LeWitt. The museum is the Menil Collection. The home is the former residence of Houston architect Bill Stern. And the plotline is still in progress:
The Unerasing
- 86 Pipers Walk [HAR]
What’s happened to this storied Walnut Bend Mod by Robert Pine from the 1960 Houston Chronicle Parade of Homes since it last appeared on Swamplot in 2010? Well, it finally sold — for $120K — the following year. (In 2014, it traded hands again, for approximately $287K, without making an appearance on MLS.) Also, new windows were cut into the living room and master bathroom, adding openings to the once-blank stone-faced walls on the front facade. There’s also this brand new screened-in patio, inserted between the carport and the main house in back, like so:
Eyes on the Street
- 18806 Park Harbor Dr. [HAR]
- 4706 Andover St. [HAR]
- 7211 Broadway St. [HAR]
- 9209 Hammerly Blvd. [HAR]
