04/16/09 11:27pm

Great guesses, everyone! We have a winner for this week’s game — and a prize sponsored by the Rice Design Alliance.

Many of you favored Forest neighborhoods. There were 3 votes each for Greenwood Forest and Champion Forest, 2 each for Prestonwood Forest and Lakewood Forest, and singles for Ponderosa Forest, Nottingham Forest, Briar Forest, Briar Forest at Kirkwood, Oak Forest, Ella Lee Forest, and Huntwick Forest The rest: Spring Shadows (2 guesses), off Mason Rd. south of I-10 near Kingsland and Highland Knolls in Katy, Nottingham Country (2 guesses), Humble, Inwood North, the northern part of Alief “bounded by HW6, Westheimer, Old Westheimer, and the Westpark Tollroad,” Fountainhead Village, Pasadena (2), Clear Lake, League City, Ashford Hollow, Ashford Village, “Ashford-ish,” Kingwood, Dairy Ashford and Memorial, Quail Valley (2), Richmond, Rosenberg, Williamsburg Settlement, Wilchester (2), Northampton in the Spring/Klein area, Lakewood Glen, Seabrook, Kemah, “right off of Memorial, just past Kirkwood,” Sugar Creek, Memorial, Friendswood, “one of the Fleetwood neighborhoods (Highway 6 and Memorial),” Grogan’s Mill, Olde Oaks, Copperfield, and the Galleria.

The prize this week is a one-year individual membership in the Rice Design Alliance. And the winner is . . . Harold Mandell, for this maybe-spot-on entry:

You guys,that parquet EVERYWHERE is a major clue. This is a late 70’s house from the floody part of Olde Oaks.

A hard working family, not born here, but grabbing the dream real fast, bought this big house to live in. But the schools were a disapointment, so they moved to a better school district for their 3 kids (2 spelling bee champs and a valedictorian). Now they are renting the house to newly arrived members of their large family, helpfully furnishing it with leftovers from the couple of budget motels they operate out on 290.

Several other players were very close!

This week’s honorable mentions go to a few players who veered off course, but offered entertaining fiction and commentary: biggerintexas for the compelling if unflattering Pasadena ballad of Stanley and Linda Morris, aurelia_eyre for a sharp account of “the worst house party I was ever forced to attend,” and movocelot, for this contribution:

I think this home DOES, in fact, show how the rich folks lived back in the day (@ jgclark), but why knock it? Today’s French-mediterranean manses will seem ridiculous pretty soon, with their giant cooking hoods & pot-fillers, media rooms nobody uses, and dust-collecting plaster-effects on the walls.

This home’s got a bunch of upgrades… I think the parquet is lovely, the cabinets useful… is that travertine tiles in the Master Bath? And the window in the water-closet is very posh!
There’s a lot of potential here, though still 8’ ceilings…
HO did a tasteful, if DULL, update to their “built-to-survive-WW3” ash-plywood, built-on-site kitchen-cabinets. Personally, I hate granite for c-tops, but I think the color scheme is everything their Realtor told them to shoot for: Blend, baby, blend.

For these reasons I’m supporting this house and vote it should continue on into the Elimination Round!

Okay, show us the house!

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