Renovations

Downtown
01/11/13 2:07pm

What Being Inside the New Houston Club Might Look Like

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Highrises, Houston History, Interiors, Proposed Developments, Renovations
1 Comment

Welcome to the new Houston Club: this rendering shows Gensler’s renovation plans for the lobby near the top of the 50-story One Shell Plaza, where the city’s oldest social club is merging with the not-as-old Plaza Club and moving in. Since 1955, the club met at 811 Rusk (shown at right); but Skansksa bought the 18-story building last year, hastening the move. Swamplot reported in early January that much of 811 Rusk’s contents are being auctioned off tomorrow — the less club members will have to drag up 49 floors to their new fancy digs:

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Candlelight Oaks Village
12/11/12 10:26am

Windows on the World of a Candlelight Oaks Village Redo

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Homes for Lease, Homes for Sale, Interiors, Renovations
9 Comments

If you triple the $54,000 purchase price of this 1978 pop-top property when it sold in April (and add some spare change), you get the initial asking price of its back-after-renovations listing: $164,840. Located on a cul-de-sac in Candlelight Oaks Village, the corner-lot home is also up for lease at $1,500 per month. It features a plethora of windows in a range of styles, proportions, and function. Several skylights, transoms, and tilt-top dormers, meanwhile, offset the bunkered-down brick facade and expansive roof.

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Apartments
11/20/12 11:28am

Kuhl-Linscomb Plans To Turn Googie Penguin Arms Apartments into Modern Home Goods Showroom

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Houston Architects, Houston Landmarks, Modern Design, Renovations, Retail, Upper Kirby
13 Comments

About a year after snatching up the Penguin Arms building at 2902 Revere St., Dan Linscomb and Pam Kuhl-Linscomb announce to the Chronicle‘s Lisa Gray their plans to incorporate Arthur Moss’s pedigreed 1950 Googie-style apartment building into the multi-building streetside campus of their Upper Kirby home-furnishings-and-knick-knacks empire: “In about a year, after a round of renovation and restoration, they plan to open the Penguin Arms as a showroom,” Gray writes. “Maybe, Dan says, they’ll reserve a little piece as an apartment, so they can literally live above the shop.”

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Comments
11/19/12 3:05pm

Comment of the Day: Scrapping It All — or not — in Westbury

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Quicklink, Redevelopment, Renovations, Uncategorized, Westbury
18 Comments

COMMENT OF THE DAY: SCRAPPING IT ALL — OR NOT — IN WESTBURY “So I have a home in Westbury that I purchased in the $190 range. It’s ok shape but I am living in another home inside the loop. As I am interested in a larger home and can’t find an affordable lot inside the loop, I am considering demoing my Westbury home and rebuilding on that lot. Does anyone have an opinion on this? I am only aware of one other Westbury new build from 2006. I love the neighborhood, I just need more space. Another option I am considering is building a second story to the existing home. Thoughts?” [Westbury Owner, commenting on A Londoners’ Guide to the Westbury Land Rush]

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Briargrove Park
11/13/12 1:45pm

On and Off and On Once More for a Briargrove Park Redo

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Homes for Sale, Interiors, Renovations
7 Comments

Since its listing 3 weeks ago, a re-remodeled home in Briargrove Park has taken a couple of breaks (for a day or less) from the market. The status is now on again, however, for the overhauled gated-courtyard property, which is capped by an almost dainty topknot of a chimney cap. Windows in the front rooms face a gated courtyard instead of the street, and a pair of smaller windows lie behind brick columns on the recessed porch. Interior revisions moved, removed, or expanded archways, doors, and parts of walls to reposition how rooms function. A massive brick fireplace now covered in stone tiles (above) provides the main living space a punchy A-side hearth, B-side backdrop to the front entry hall. The home was built in 1974, remodeled in 2006. Other going-for-a-flip tweaks to the home since its purchase in late August for $275,000 freshened the finishes and replaced the deck, windows, and roof. Despite its on-and-off market behavior, the new asking price has stayed at $449,500.

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Home Design
10/24/12 1:31pm

Porch-Sitting on the Edge in Woodland Heights

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Homes for Sale, Interiors, Renovations, Woodland Heights
16 Comments

Wraparound porches on two levels add a little more living space to this by-the-park, by-the freeway 1920 home in Woodland Heights, outside the Houston Ave. boundary of that vintage neighborhood’s historic district. The garage-free property relisted with a new agency yesterday at $325,000 — after 4-months of  toe-testing at $345,000. Its crisply painted exterior trim gives way to the interior’s stained wood, one of a few elements retained or accented in a 2005 remodeling by one of several previous owners this millennium.

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Comments
10/10/12 10:04pm

Verses of the Day: Abandoned, Rotting, Renewed

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Demolitions, Quicklink, Renovations
No Comments

VERSES OF THE DAY: ABANDONED, ROTTING, RENEWED “Bereft of care and dignity in their old age, they take up too much space/land, they shelter vermin/cancer, and their bones have weakened. Rest in pieces, nothing reclaimed, forgotten.” [Darby Mom], “A pathetic sight that’s not so rare Heaps of garbage everywhere Lead, asbestos, junk hardware Neighbors are a true nightmare” [commonsense], and “It seems a silliness to mourn The past’s detritus, junk like this — To think of years a house has seen, Compared to what its present is. – Yet somehow I long to restore The leaning pillars, rotting wood, To shore beneath a sagging floor, To think that all that can be, could. – It’s not to be, this will be razed, Built up again in fashion new, O Soul, someday your turn will come, To be rebuilt — plumb, level, true.” [Practically_Yours, all commenting on Daily Demolition Report: Tulane Highway]

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Home Decor
10/09/12 2:53pm

Big Bungalowing a Meyerland Mod

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Homes for Sale, Interiors, Meyerland, Renovations
98 Comments

Here are the after and before on a 1959 once-flat-roofed mod in Meyerland, 3 doors down from an entrance to St. Nicholas School, a block north of the tall power lines that parallel Willowbend Blvd. A redo by Resto Homes made sure water wouldn’t pool on top anymore — and made a few more changes while at it. The redone 4-bedroom, 3-bath home, which now features oversized Craftsman-ic details and an encyclopedic home-furnishing set in its 2,500 sq. ft., made its MLS debut last Friday, at a stylish $687,493.

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Apartments
10/02/12 12:19pm

Taking on a Rough Midtown Trio

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Buying and Selling, Midtown, Renovations
57 Comments



Montrose-area real estate investor (and frequent Swamplot commenter) Cody Lutsch expects to close later this month on 3 apartment buildings on Holman just east of HCC between Crawford and 288 that he calls “the worst of the worst” in Midtown. A web listing for the properties cautions potential buyers: “DO NOT WALK THE PROPERTY AND DISTURB THE TENANTS. (it’s for you own good, i mean it).” Lutsch calls the group of buildings, which date from 1938 and has seen half a dozen owners over the last 10 years, “very very rough . . . Police are always going over there, there is drugs, prostitution . . .”

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Homes for Sale
09/17/12 10:52am

Fixed That for You: A Memorial Hollowed Modern, Corrected

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Memorial Hollow, Modern Design, Renovations
37 Comments

Yes, the shots above are front-yard views of the exact same house on Kimberley Lane in Memorial Hollow, before (at top) and after a thoroughly de-Modernizing revamp completed earlier this year. Just about every sixties-era feature of the original home has been scrapped and “corrected” with — well, something else. The ask for this brilliant flip: a $224K premium over the sales price of the home from December of last year. You are so welcome:

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Home Design
09/04/12 2:44pm

Riverside Terrace Stucco Redo, With or Without Garage

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Homes for Sale, Interiors, Renovations, Riverside Terrace
32 Comments

A bit like icing, the stucco smoothed over the exterior of this renovated-to-the-studs 1930 brick home in Riverside Terrace was a finishing touch. Interior work reconfigured some of the space and added “engineered wood” flooring, fresh paint, and carpet, plus new wiring, plumbing, and HVAC. In mid-April 2012, the property changed hands at $67,000 after 3 months on the market — it was initially priced at $110,500, with $10K-or-so reductions coming every few weeks. The completed project appeared a week and a half ago as a new listing — for $249,900, though for an extra $20K prior to closing, the seller will add a 2-car garage to go with that new driveway:

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Homes for Sale
08/27/12 10:27am

The Two Shall Live as One (For Now) in Southmore

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Interiors, Museum District, Renovations
8 Comments

Pick a path. Each leads to this duplex-turned-single-family residence in Southmore, but only the left fork heads to its front entry. The 1930 home is on a street of octogenarian 2-unit houses and newer 3-story townhomes just north of Southmore Blvd. in the Museum District’s transforming hinterlands. This newly listed two-for-one is asking $395,000.

Since the reworked interior retains much of the original floor plan and features, the home’s next owner might want to undo the conversion. Or not:

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Forest West
08/24/12 4:17pm

Selling a Forest West Cleanup Project

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Home Decor, Homes for Sale, Interiors, Renovations
2 Comments

Rehab complete, this cleaned-up 1975 Forest West home is back on the market, a full year after its last sales effort. Two weeks ago, the property re-listed with a new agency at $189,000. A previous listing would have sold for $109,500 in May 2011 but dropped the price to $95,000 before ending its summer run in August.

The Colonial-style entry, a nod to the nation’s Bicentennial run-up, maintains its broken-pediment tailoring. But renovations in the interim changed a bunch of other things: adding granite in the kitchen and bathrooms, swapping out tile and carpet throughout the home, removing wallpaper and painting over paneling, repainting inside and out, and replacing the hot water heater, kitchen cabinets, exterior French doors, and all the sinks, tubs, and toilets.

And, in lieu of furniture, adding a few discreetly placed potted plants for the photo shoot.

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Braeburn Valley
08/22/12 10:16am

Results of a Braeburn Valley Redwood Revival

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Homes for Sale, Houston Architects, Interiors, Renovations
23 Comments

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.

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Downtown
08/16/12 12:46pm

Downtown Warehouse To Sober Up, Get a New Life

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Institutional Buildings, Renovations
5 Comments

Additions and renovations to this metal-clad warehouse building tucked between the Eastex Fwy. and the Chenevert St. entrance ramp headed north from Minute Maid Park have begun, the city announced today. The 2-story, 19,080 sq. ft. building tucked behind the Star of Hope Mission on Ruiz St. will become the 84-bed Houston Center for Sobriety, modeled after a smaller facility in San Antonio called the Restoration Center. When the $4.3 million project is completed later this year, police will deliver drunks to the 150 N. Chenevert St. address instead of jail, for a little R&R.

Photo: Candace Garcia

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