Here we go with another round! This time we thank the Rice Design Alliance for sponsoring the prize: A one-year individual RDA membership, the kind people normally pay $45 for. If you win the game this week, it’s yours!
A quick rule refresher: Your goal is to guess the neighborhood the pictured home is in. If you’re the only one to guess correctly, you win the prize! If more than one player guesses the right location, the player who provided the best explanation wins.
Remember: If you already know this property, or if you come across it while we’re playing the game, don’t spoil it all for everyone else by blurting out the answer. Instead, send Swamplot an email with a link to the actual listing. Then enter an incorrect guess, but it explain it so it sounds reasonable. If you do this well, you’ll get special recognition for your efforts. And if no one guesses the actual neighborhood, you just might win that prize!
And now, the rest of the photos:
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So you think you’ve got enough clues already, huh? Well . . . did you consider all these rooms?
Enough! Your guesses belong in the comments. The actual location — and the prize winner — will be announced here Thursday!
Update: We have the answer!
- This week’s prize sponsor: Rice Design Alliance
Photos: HAR
I’ve dated this woman. She’s in her mid-50s, met her on match.com and we went out for a little while. Her only daughter lives in New York City with her stockbroker husband and the daughter helped her mother buy a townhouse near her beloved Memorial Park running trail. This explains the Laura Ashely interior design and the bedroom made up for when the kids come visit.
Oh, it is in Rice Military.
Everything about this place screams Galveston East End to me — the double parlor, the small kitchen, the staircase, the add-on master bath. Except for two things. No, make that three:
1. The greenery outside is too green for recent Galveston
2. I don’t think Gus has taken us quite that far afield in the NGG. Kemah was the limit.
3. It’s been updated more than a historic house would be — especially the fireplaces and the dropped ceiling. Still, it’s old. Victorian-ish. Where do you find Galveston-y buildings outside Galveston? The Heights, of course! That would also explain the reasonably lavish updates and level of furnishings.
Too … much … crown molding
Camp Logan?
Heights, no way. This is newish traditional in an becoming-upscale neighborhood. I guess the construction was mid-late 90’s (possibly early 2000’s) in Afton Oaks, Oak Estates, or Bellaire. The house is too big for Heights and the windows and doors are all wrong for an older home.
Everything says recent “empty nester” except for the baby’s room, which is a bit of a headscratcher to me.
I was so excited because I’ve been in a kitchen EXACTLY like this one in The Woodlands; the tiny cooking island (which cannot be enlarged because the photog is standing on a staircase,) the sink-wdw overlooks the drive and the ext-door goes out to the garage and pool. But alas I can’t figure out the mastr bed. windows which suggest an impacting shed-roofline outside. Nor the big tray ceiling.
I do think this is newer construction: the fat crown and taller base trim look late 90’s to me. Upscale. Tasteful.
Note to BRAD: Aren’t we supposed to email Gus directly when we know the house, it’s owner and all her stats? ;-)
I think the NGG may have stayed in town this week, with a trip to a new-ish (late 90s/early 2000s) patio home. The smaller yard means that the lady of the house doesn’t spend as much time indulging of her old passion of gardening, which is just as well because she has a grandchild to babysit. Sometimes she is so busy that she uses the treadmill in the guest bedroom rather than going to the Houstonian for pilates. Who knew being a lady of leisure would be this busy? Now that her husband is finally joining her in retirement, they are selling the house in Avalon Place and moving to their vacation home in the Hill Country full time. Thank goodness, because if they didn’t move soon she was going to have to renovate the kitchen to get a farmhouse sink in there!
moveocelot, I don’t know this house… I was writing a bit of fantasy.. :-)
The coffered ceilings throw me a bit since it’s hard to create those in older homes, but still older features–fireplace & flanking bookcases, all the crown molding, apparent room layout, plus the expensive curtains/drapes/plantation shutters make me guess the area between Shepherd & Montrose and 59 to Milford or North. It’s almost Southampton, but not quite.
Easy: Heights. Specifically, off of Nicholson and those surrounding streets.
I guess for Bellaire, like, Newcastle-ish.
Long time lurker, 1st time player–impelled to jump in because I really want the prize. And because you guys are so off the mark on this one.
No man doth live in this house– and the baby in the baby’s room is a guest baby. This home is found in the great divorcee belt- one of those late ’80’s or newer townhomes found west of Chimney Rock to around Voss, between Woodway and Westheimer. The stairwell and the upstairs ceiling tell all.
Guessing this is circa 1999. Too much greenery and lawn view for one of Houston’s famous “let’s cram 6 townhouses on a 50×150
lot” but I will say it is a replacement of an older home on smaller lot. My original thought was West Lane Place (adjacent to Afton Oaks)or a Wm.Carl home on Nantucket.
Since deciding it is a single family dwelling
with tasteful furnishings, I’ll guess it is in Southside Place.
There’s a Divorcee Belt? Is that on some map somewhere?
All those people who have tacky window coverings and the occasional Africanesque statuary live in that divorcee belt. It basically runs in between Beltway 8 and 610 and is crossed by the likes of Westheimer, Woodway, Richmond, Bissonnet et al. Basically these people met in drunken stupors along the Richmond strip in the early 80s at those cheesy night clubs; tried to make lasting marriages but eventually divorced; and then bought homes and patio homes close but not too close to their old stomping grounds.
Incidentally, many of them work non-descript office jobs at middle market companies in the Westchase district and raaaaaave about the tres leches cake at the Churrasco’s out there on Westheimer. Yay Divorcee Belt!
ooh, something tells me there’s more to this thread…
I’ll say Indian Trail/Indian Circle/Tecumseh off Chimney Rock btw Woodway and Memorial. Empty nester w/ grandkids from baby to tween that have their own rooms.
Count me on the Afton Oaks bandwagon. My grandmother sold her house on West Lane in the mid-90’s and this looks suspiciously like one of the town/patiohomes that went up on her lot.
Bobby Hadley, you see the Great West Houston Divorcee Belt right on– but remember, there’s also the divorcee demographic that arrived from comfortable circumstances in say Briargrove, or even Memorial. Comfortable until there comes a time when “she’d rather be homeless than be at home with him”. Then she finds herself in downsized quarters– but at last she can decorate it just like she wants it. I say this place is definitely north of Westheimer, and except for Hammersmith I would say east of Voss.
This home is in the area of the Houstonian off of Memorial, closer to San Felipe-Sage/Post Oak. The kitchen dates it to around 2001 and the small size makes me think the lot is not especially large. It looks to me like they had a decorator come in and all of the built in book shelves suggests a higher end builder.
It’s a nicer townhouse thing with a yard-let in the original divorce-belt: Sin Alley. Midlane @ San Felipe.
I agree there doesn’t seem to be a man anywhere in sight of this house – I’d guess a patio home/townhouse near Bering or somewhere else outside the loop, past the Galleria, heading towards Voss. My only question is: why is she moving? Did another sugardaddy come to call?
I got into this one a little too late. I think Harold Mandell has nailed it. Though learning about the divorcee belt is very entertaining.
The crown molding! The teal dining room chairs + yellow walls + plaid drapes!
The recessed lights in the ceiling, stone-surrounded fireplace x 2, tiny tiny windows in one of the bedrooms all say to me late-eighties to early-nineties construction in West University, before the art of McMansionizing was completely perfected.
The odd things are the bed and TV in the nursery (definitely a visiting baby only), the wood paneling in the den, and the nook and ceiling in the office (perhaps a garage apartment?). If I remember correctly, garage apartment rentals may not be allowed in West University, so that would explain the office set up. Might be the only place to where the significant other of the decorator of the home can escape!