08/23/12 4:50pm

Yep. It’s pink, and a sun-baked shade at that. The adobe abode has Sante Fe styling in an age and area more prone to “Texas Tuscan.” Located in Bellaire’s Westmoreland Farms section, this 2000 home was a late work of designer Roger Rasbach, considered a pioneer of energy-conscious home design. The hacienda itself measures 5,454 sq. ft., but its footprint includes another 850 sq. ft. of covered outdoor space containing courtyards, pavilions, a pergola, a pool, and a spa. On its eastern border, the near-acre lot backs up to a utility easement, with railroad tracks beyond. The almost-an-acre lot was up for sale for a spell last year. Re-listed in April by the same agent after 5-month breather — and a price drop of nearly a quarter-million dollars — the home’s asking price has remained steady since, at $2,199,500.

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08/22/12 10:16am

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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08/14/12 9:32am

There’s a stuccoed Dutch-Colonial-Swiss Colony on the not-so-mountainous streets behind Weslayan Plaza’s west side in the College Court section (aka the “chimney”) of West University Place. The lookalike cottage and quarters are steps away from the new Buffalo Grille and a U.S. Post Office. West U’s Judson Park to the south and a proposed rail station for Metro’s supposed University Line are also blocks away. Railroad tracks, meanwhile, are just up the street.

During construction of the 1983 main house, a former 1940s “barn” on the site became a 2-story guest house in lieu of a garage. HCAD cites some remodeling in 1991 to the home. Last Friday, the property re-listed at $462,500 after a previous listing by the same agent initially sought $575,000 in April 2012, with adjustments to $565,000, $550,000, and then a summer of $524,990. The home’s side entry and hipped roof make for an atypical floor plan:

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08/08/12 3:31pm

As mods go, this one in Tanglewood is just one of that neighborhood’s thinning pack of mid-century homes. What sets this property apart? Maybe the bomb shelter out back — and the property’s brush with Hollywood as a film set in Breast Men, the 1997 HBO David Schwimmer flick that finally gave Houston its due as the birthplace of the boob job industry. The mid-July listing of this property for $1.1 million calls the 60-year-old property on Sugar Hill Dr. a “wonderful building site” and leaves it at that. But preservation advocates at Houston Mod met with the home’s current, long-term owner and gleaned some tidbits to share about the home’s origins and features:

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08/07/12 1:40pm

Talk about a gated driveway. This Lancaster Place cottage’s half-a-yard carport extends to the front sidewalk, with a double-garage door and entry gate punched into the lot-line iron fence. The combination gives the front yard a shaded pavilion as well as a parking area. It’s also the starting point of a partly-paved, partly-pebbled path to the front porch and an office in the converted, detached garage at the back of the lot. The 1910-built home has been updated several times, including some work in 2004. Since then, there’ve been big changes a couple blocks away at the corner of Dunlavy and West Alabama: A new H-E-B Market has replaced some apartments, and some new apartments are about to replace the just-shuttered Fiesta Mart.

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08/03/12 12:05pm

The new kid on this otherwise out-of-the-Twenties block of cottages in Hyde Park is on the block again. Built in 2008, the property west of Montrose Blvd. and south of West Gray St. sold in March 2009 at $629,450 and again in September 2011 at $725,000. Last month, the HardiePlanked home on a 4,800-sq.-ft. lot popped up as a new listing one more time, asking $819,000. The house sits behind a fence with an automated gate across a double-wide driveway. Three crisply trimmed dormers rise above the 2-car garage and a recessed, at-grade porch like whitecaps on water. Just a few doors down at Montrose, there’s a convenience store and that 10-year-old, 14-unit, 4-story stucco condoplex known as the Renaissance on Montrose.

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07/20/12 2:18pm

Gated and front-loading, this 1983 contemporary lot-filler throws a curve or two onto an otherwise straight-from-the-fifties street of ranch-style homes in Meyerland. Earlier this month, the stucco, steel, and glass brick specimen returned to the market after a 4-month break, with a new and lower price of $829,000. It’s a re-listing by a new agency. A previous listing for the home initially sought $975,000 back in October, but by January that price had dropped to $899,000.

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07/13/12 12:50pm

Like a beret worn jauntily, an angled steel roof provides a little attitude, a stab of color, and some tilt to an otherwise monochromatic and perpendicular property on a lot-and-a-half in the Melford Heights area of the Heights. That’s near 14th St. west of Studewood, 2 blocks from the Fiesta. The much-discussed 2006 home has a block-on-block facade, light-and-shadow fencing, and landing-pad pavers. But for a boldly toned painted wall here and there, the inside repeats the exterior’s shades-of-gray grid:

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07/12/12 2:11pm

One of the reasons Brookesmith resident Vicki Scarpato bought the 1890 cottage on Archer St. pictured above last year was because of the 2009 Modern addition at the back: “I love the mix,” she says. Her home is next door to the modern structure architect Jeromy Murphy designed for his family and not far from the Cordell St. shipping-container house — all in a neighborhood that she calls “an interesting mix of beautiful new modern, Victorian cottages in various states of repair, and only a very few instances of three-to-a-lot townhouses.” Here are some pics of the back:

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06/28/12 1:37pm

Instead of razing this ranch-style home, the new owner raised the roof, adding a heap of space on the second floor and reworking the original floor plan downstairs. Located in Woodside, near Longfellow Elementary School, the 1957 home morphed via a to-the-studs renovation and addition following its purchase in 2009 for $315,000. Now weighing in at 3,621 sq. ft., the new listing’s asking price is a much heftier $675,000.

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06/27/12 2:09pm

Some might know this Milam at W. Main property as the former home of Milam House, a social services agency that operated within until 2007. Some might recognize it as a building they view peripherally and from above while zipping out of downtown on Spur 527. Behind the automated gate, however, the mansion-turned-commercial space holds a doctor’s practice downstairs and unrelated professional offices upstairs.

The building combines the presence and proportions of a 1950 home with the more modern upgrades of a 2007 renovation, which also subdivided — only temporarily, the listing agent says — several first floor rooms. Described as an historic property in the Bute section of the Montrose area, this new listing fronting an access road is asking $1,350,000 — regardless of whether its future use remains commercial, resumes residential status, or blends a bit of each. Its neighbors include 2-story apartments next door and 3-story offices-over-parking across the street.

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06/25/12 2:02pm

This expanded-since-1938 home in West U has a 2-story front facade, but 3 stories of living space. Its last redo was in 2000. Listed in mid-June at $1,091,000, the home is located west of Buffalo Speedway in a section of the small city where lots run 50 ft. by 150 ft. Unlike many newer properties, this 5-bedroom home has no brick or stucco and doesn’t fill the lot. Behind the house there’s a deck with an outdoor kitchen and a bit of a yard — or is that a garden?

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06/21/12 2:51pm

Is that an arrow or an anchor above the dining-room bay window of this well-gabled home a little more than a mile northeast of the Willowbrook Mall? Either way, the decorative timbering acts as a harbinger of the many accents, patterns, and imagery within:   CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

06/18/12 4:35pm

These twin townhomes look a bit steely-eyed beneath heavy-lidded, cantilevered roofs. They share skyline views of downtown from their double-decker balconies and storefront windows laced with Mondrian-style tracery. However, only 1 of these by-the-bayou units designed by MC2 Architects is for sale. It’s the one just a tad closer to downtown (above, at right). Last month, the asking price on this April listing dropped $30K to $549,000.

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