Tag: 77018

Home Decor
01/14/14 3:15pm

Cooking Around an Overhauled Oak Forest Rancher

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Home Design, Homes for Sale, Interiors, Oak Forest
7 Comments

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When everyone gravitates to the kitchen (top) of this overhauled 1953 ranch-style home on Hewitt Dr. near T.C. Jester, there might actually be room for them. The opened-up prep space is just off the combo living-dining room, and there’s room for grilling out back, too. The listing appeared on the market last week with a $369,000 asking price. A 2012 attempt to sell the property — for $70K less — didn’t pan out. The home was renovated in 2011; the current owners purchased it in 2010 for $145,000. Welcome to Oak Forest!

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Mid-sized Micro
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Featured Posts
01/13/14 10:45am

Suchu’s GOOFy New Strip Center Home Is Where Patrick Swayze Learned To Dance

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Garden Oaks, Houston History, Leasing, Openings and Closings, Strip Centers
2 Comments

Suchu Dance, 3480 Ella Blvd., Ella Plaza Shopping Center, Oak Forest, Houston

The 1,500-sq.-ft. space deep in the crotch of the Ella Plaza Shopping Center just south of the railroad tracks at 3480 Ella Blvd. is the new home of modern dance troupe Suchu Dance. It’s also the former longtime Houston haunt of Patsy Swayze‘s Houston JazzBallet Company and the Swayze School of Dance. Long before the dance teacher made it big with her choreography for Urban Cowboy in 1980 and decamped to Hollywood, Swayze taught hundreds of gyrating Houstonians — including her 5 children, in the strip center corner. Her son Buddy, who as Patrick Swayze went on to star in Dirty Dancing and Ghost, started barging in on classes there at the age of 3, long before playing football at Waltrip High School across the street; he met his wife, Lisa Niemi, in the strip-center studio as well. He died from pancreatic cancer in 2009; his mother passed away in California’s Simi Valley last September.

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Somebody Put Baby in a Strip Center Corner
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Oak Forest
01/08/14 11:45am

Where’s That Oak Forest Retail Renaissance?

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Quicklink, Retail
13 Comments

WHERE’S THAT OAK FOREST RETAIL RENAISSANCE? The Shops at Oak Forest, 43rd St. and Ella, Oak Forest, HoustonIt’s not at all surprising to the Houston Press‘s Abby Koenig that her neighborhood, Oak Forest, walked away with the Least Recognizable Neighborhood title in this year’s Swamplot Awards. But she wonders when the area’s retail and commerce will catch up to its residential transformation: “There’s still nothing here! I am exaggerating; over the past four years a few new places have popped up: Cottonwood, Shepherd Park and Pink’s Pizza have opened up over on Shepherd, hidden away on Wakefield is Petrol and Wakefield CrowBar, in the shopping center on Ella we’ve still got our Kroger with some chain additions like a European Wax Center (thanks?) and an Edible Arrangements (thanks again?) and there is the much-praised Plonk bar and restaurant. But other than a select few, there’s not a whole lot to do in Oak Forest. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want the neighborhood to turn into another Washington Ave, but the hottest news item on the Oak Forest Facebook page over the past three months has been over the rumor that Berryhill is coming; that’s how bored we are: ‘not bad Mexican’ is the most exciting thing we’ve got going on.” [Art Attack; previously on Swamplot] Photo of Shops at Oak Forest: Transwestern Retail

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Featured Posts
11/14/13 3:00pm

The Endangered Piney Woods Inside an Oak Forest Home

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Home Decor, Homes for Sale, Interiors, Oak Forest
5 Comments

In Oak Forest, there’s a forest of knotty pine (top) and other hardwoods inside a 1953 home located east of Donna Bell Ln. north of W. 43rd St. But is it doomed? An “as-is” listing of the property posted Tuesday (price tag: $284,900) mentions all the remodeling and new construction going on throughout the midcentury neighborhood. Some original flourishes and finishes remain inside this pinewood derby of a home, though.

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Garden Oaks
10/29/13 4:00pm

A Few Months After Its 1-Hour Sale, Garden Oaks ‘Century-Built’ Home Redo Is Ready To Move

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Homes for Sale, Interiors
26 Comments

Restoration has been swift at this concrete-block home in Garden Oaks that sold quickly in June 2013 — for $225,000. When the property reappeared on the market as a new listing late last week, the asking price was up to $475,000. Houston architect Allen R. Williams Jr. designed the solidly built home back in the day, the year of which was either 1950 or 1942, depending on which records apply. This year’s updates, by serial renovator Will Martin, hew close to the home’s mod origins. The original listing didn’t feature many interior photos, but the home’s latest appearance makes up for that:

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Homes for Sale
10/01/13 3:00pm

An Added Upper Story Makes an Oak Forest Porch Perch

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Interiors, Oak Forest
11 Comments

A deep-lot pocket of Oak Forest near White Oak Bayou appears to have escaped the area’s new-build frenzy, getting some second-story work instead. This property, for example, added an upstairs master suite with pool-view porch as part of a previous overhaul. The 1955 home landed on the market last month and has a $499,000 price tag. It last sold in 2009 for $359,190, just a tad higher than the $359K asking price.

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Garden Oaks
09/27/13 4:30pm

Within the Realm of a Garden Oaks Domain, Beyond the Turret and Quoins

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Home Decor, Homes for Sale, Interiors
7 Comments

With its courtly interior finishes (top) and not-so ivory tower, an updated 1948 Garden Oaks home has a bit of a baronial feel. Most of the grounds, however, lie in the palatial corner property’s deep, catty-corner setback rather than its residual back yard. Garage-free, the stately brick home is located a block north of the North Loop at Lawrence St. and last sold in 2008 for $425,000. When it popped up on the market last week, the asking price had reached the princely sum of $625,000.

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Homes for Sale
08/27/13 12:00pm

The Latest Touch-Ups in Oak Forest

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Interiors, Oak Forest
1 Comment

Two years ago, this previously renovated 1949 Oak Forest home sold for $189,000. Its listing last week comes with a $293,000 price tag. The property, on a street that’s mostly original housing stock, is located east of Rosslynn Rd. and around the corner from the Frank Black Middle School campus entrance on Piney Woods Dr. The back of Oak Forest Elementary School is a longer hike east toward 43rd St.

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Homes for Sale
08/15/13 3:00pm

Where To Get Twice as Much in Oak Forest

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Interiors, Oak Forest
9 Comments

A one-of-a-kind Oak Forest home doubles up on many of its features. Two chimneys form a sassy kind of turret above the front porch. There’s a second formal entry. And both wings of the home have their own garage. Plus, the property occupies an oversized corner lot, so it’s got twice (or maybe even thrice) the yard of its neighbors. The 13-year-old custom home appeared on the market last weekend. Its asking price: $925,000.

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Garden Oaks
08/02/13 4:00pm

Courting a Bay View in a Garden Oaks Court

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Homes for Sale, Interiors
16 Comments

Look-alike exteriors on sound-alike streets of the garden variety line the ring of roadways within Garden Oaks Court, a gated compound off 34th St. west of Shepherd Dr. Neat rows of (closed) front-loading garages have shallow setbacks and support a repeating pattern of porches, balconies — and the occasional bay window. A shingles-and-siding-fronted specimen of the latter (at right) was listed earlier this week with an asking price of $298,500. Its official description touts the home’s location within the 9-year-old development as having no railroad tracks, power lines, or neighbors behind it. With 61 homes in the niche neighborhood and a popular restaurant-bar within walking distance, however, plenty of folks are close by.

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Demolitions
07/02/13 4:45pm

The Oak Forest Corner Demobilizing for Berryhill

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Oak Forest, Restaurants
18 Comments

A reader sends in this photo of the Oak Forest Mobil at Ella and 1201 W. 43rd St., the death sentence of which was published in the Daily Demolition Report last Thursday. Once the station’s torn down, reports the reader, a Berryhill Baja Grill will be built on this corner; that’s according to a post the reader saw on the members-only Oak Forest Homeowners Association Facebook page. A bit more evidence: A since-deleted brief that appeared in the Houston Chronicle in March 2012 notes that Berryhill had been granted a sales permit at this address.

Photo: Swamplot inbox

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Buying and Selling
05/15/13 2:30pm

Comment of the Day Runner-Up: Y’all Come By Now, Y’hear?

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Comments, Garden Oaks, Quicklink
1 Comment

COMMENT OF THE DAY RUNNER-UP: Y’ALL COME BY NOW, Y’HEAR? “I am thankful for Ben’s research and for putting me in touch with Robert who had the right buyer for my Dad’s house. I have always loved this house and have great memories here. It’s where I learned to appreciate unique architecture. I now live in NYC. I will have an open house on June 1st 10a to 4p if anyone would like to stop by, say hello — see the ‘before’ and the Texas shaped hot-tub my dad made in the back before it probably goes. If you are allergic to dust, wear a mask. PS — the boat is gone. long story.” [laura kellner, commenting on The Century Built Home in Garden Oaks That Sold in About an Hour]

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Independence Heights
05/10/13 10:30am

The New Recycled Building at the ReUse Warehouse

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Industrial Properties, New Construction, Office Space, Recycling
4 Comments

The finishing touches are being put on this somewhat totemic new building at the ReUse Warehouse site in Independence Heights. This one’s built on the concrete slab and with the steel beams of the old Public Works machine shop here at 9003 Main St., downcycling that building’s roof for use as its ceiling. It’ll serve as office space for Solid Waste Management staff; it’ll also house a workshop to process donated materials (usually the leftovers from new builds and the salvaged stuff from demos) and feature a recycled-art gallery. Zen T. C. Zheng reports that the building should be ready to go by June.

Photo: Allyn West

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