A second-story job might be screened by strategically-unfurling treetops, but it’s still hard to miss the stacked silhouette on a Meyerland-area street of single-story homes in Marilyn Estates, south of Brays Bayou near Chimney Rock.
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Tag: Renovations
A NEW MOON TOWER PHASE 
It just takes awhile to remake a potty-mouthed wild-game hot-dog shack, but East Downtown’s Moon Tower Inn has finally reopened after 15 months — with some historical upgrades to the decor at 3004 Canal: “The new tap wall, kitchen and brewhouse are made from shipping containers and reclaimed building materials. For example, [Co-owner Brandon] Young says that the metal siding used to be a barn on the Stephen F Austin University campus, and there are wooden planks from a Louisiana slaves’ quarters.” [Eater Houston] Photo: Marty E.
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:
Former Houston Rocket Hakeem Olajuwon quietly opened the doors this past week of a brand-new flagship store for his new clothing line, DR34M. It’s conveniently located just off NASA Pkwy., inside a mansion built during the Depression by a Texas oilman — used later for more than 20 years by NASA for its Lunar and Planetary Institute.
The 17,000-sq.-ft. Italianate mansion by the Clear Lake shore was completed in 1930 by Houston city hall architect Joseph Finger for Jim West, whose family sold it to Humble Oil when he died in 1941. Since then, it has been owned by the Pappas restaurant family and Rice University. And in 1969, during the Apollo missions, the nearby Johnson Space Center moved its moon unit here; it stayed until 1991.
Olajuwon, who has made a lot of investments in Houston-area real estate since his 2002 retirement from the NBA, bought the West Mansion in 2006. He had plans to subdivide the sprawling 41-acre estate to sell off to developers, according to news reports. Later reports indicated the mansion would be razed, or that a retirement village would be built around it. But since early this year, workers have been making extensive renovations to the building, inside and out:
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.
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.”
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]
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.
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.
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]
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.
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 . . .”
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:
Columns accent the front porch — and are left to define rooms in the opened up floor plan of this $323,900 listing that popped up over the weekend in Candlelight Woods, south of Pinemont Dr. The shady northern approach to the 1964 ranch-style home is a contrast to its brighter pool-view side at the back of the home. Meanwhile, just beyond the back fence, there’s a patch of veggie garden — and a path along a ravine off nearby White Oak Bayou. CONTINUE READING THIS STORY
A bit like icing, the stucco smoothed over the exterior of this renovated-to-the-studs 1930Â 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:
