09/15/17 3:00pm

Entire episodes of TLC’s long-running reality TV series The Little Couple were devoted to the construction, outfitting, and decor of the 2-story home at 2802 Fairhope St. in Knollwood Village to accommodate the particular requirements — and dimensions — of the growing family of its owners, Dr. Jen Arnold and Bill Klein. The home has been shown off in magazine features, too (see the above video from People). Since the end of the show’s last season the couple has moved to Florida, however, and as of last week the home is up for sale. But here’s some news that might come as a disappointment to the show’s many fans — some of whom have chosen to show up on the home’s doorstep and leave notes for its stars: The home has already been renovated, and many of those little touches the couple so greatly appreciated (the custom-lower-height countertops in the kitchen, for example) have been replaced.

Non-fans or average-sized house shoppers just looking for a place to live, however, will probably appreciate the renovations just completed by Blackwell Design, which included raising all the shower heads; reworking the kitchen and bathrooms with standard-height counters; elevating the outdoor BBQ, and raising the cabinets in the laundry room and the vanity in the master closet. There’s also a new custom pantry in the kitchen.

Here’s a quick tour of the new interior:

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Moving on Up
07/13/15 4:15pm

COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE ONLY 5 HOUSTON NEIGHBORHOODS YOU MEET ON TV NEWS Houston Neighborhoods on TV“It’s a balancing act. If they get too specific (address! intersection!) the newscasters know that the overwhelming majority of the metro which has no relation to that spot will tune out. If they are too vague (somewhere in the solar system!), once again they run the risk that the audience will feel no connection to the dateline location of the story and will also tune out. But there’s that sweet spot (southwest Houston!) where a large wedge of the viewing audience will think ‘I live/work/school sometimes in what I think of as southwest Houston’ and sit up and pay attention. Gotcha, TV viewers!” [slugline, commenting on What If Local Reporters Could Keep Their Houston Neighborhoods Straight?] Illustration: Lulu

07/10/15 1:00pm

WHAT IF LOCAL REPORTERS COULD KEEP THEIR HOUSTON NEIGHBORHOODS STRAIGHT? Screenshot of KHOU Report on Shooting in Independence Heights, HoustonMaybe by being more specific and accurate about the locations they describe, suggests Christopher Andrews, teevee news reporters could help Houston learn a little more about itself: “I sometimes wonder how much more we as citizens could learn about our cities if our local news media accurately described the neighborhoods in our cities. A shooting occurred in the Independence Heights neighborhood of Houston early Wednesday morning. Independence Heights is a neighborhood just north of Houston’s I-610 loop. It is home to what most claim was ‘Texas’ first self-governing African-American community.’ When Houston’s local news media covered the shooting, it was described as a shooting ‘in the Heights-area.‘ Would viewers not know where Independence Heights is located? Well, sure, it was near the Heights. But how close is near? Another outlet described it as ‘north Houston.’ Again, how far north of Downtown Houston is ‘north Houston’? Houston is a gigantic city, so north Houston should be more than a few miles from its center. The site of the shooting is approximately a half mile north of Houston’s I-610 loop, which serves as the northern border of what is known as the Houston Heights neighborhood. (To be technical, Sunset Heights is the subdivision name north of the Houston Heights proper.) This is part a further trend in Houston of simply attaching ‘-Heights’ to neighborhoods or developments in hope of invoking the charm of the Houston Heights proper. (I’m sure this can be said of many other neighborhoods in other cities as well.)” [Not of It] Screenshot: KHOU

06/25/14 10:15am

AEREO’S HOUSTON TEEVEE SERVICE LIKELY A BUST AFTER THIS MORNING’S SUPREME COURT RULING Cyrus One West Houston Data Center, 5150 Westway Park Blvd., HoustonSo which West Houston data center is the one crowded with all those tiny Aereo antennas on its roof? The secret location shouldn’t need to stay secret for much longer, since the Supreme Court issued a ruling this morning essentially declaring the company’s service — which grabs TV signals from local broadcasters and streams them over the internet to subscribers for a fee — to be illegal. In a 6-to-3 decision (with dissent, notably, from the judges generally considered the most conservative), the court declared that Aereo functions similarly to a cable service, and should be subject to the same regulations, copyright laws, and fees charged by television networks. Aereo currently operates in Houston and 10 other cities. [USA Today; previously on Swamplot] Photo of Houston West Data Center (probably not the Aereo location) at 5150 Westway Park Blvd.: CyrusOne

04/04/14 1:45pm

THE TOP SECRET WEST HOUSTON ROOFTOP CABINETS GRABBING HOUSTON TV SIGNALS FOR INTERNET STREAMING Cyrus One West Houston Data Center, 5150 Westway Park Blvd., HoustonChronicle tech reporter Dwight Silverman tours the rooftop base housing tens of thousands of tiny, dime-size antennas used by a New York-based company whose business model of capturing local TV, storing it on DVR servers, and streaming it to customers, is headed for a Supreme Court showdown: “Aereo’s local operation is located in a data center in west Houston. (I can’t say more than that – not because of Aereo, but because the data center is very security-conscious and keeps the location secret to protect other customers.) The location was picked partly because TV signals for most of Houston’s broadcast stations are strong there. The antennas are stored in cabinets mounted on a platform on the center’s roof. To get there, you must climb about 20 feet up a vertical ladder (after receiving a detailed safety briefing) and exit through a hatch onto the roof. The two cabinets each have a locked door that provides access on one side. Open them, and you can see long circuit-board racks, each about 14-16 inches long, that hold the antennas. Below them is equipment that converts the radio frequency signals to MPEG-2 video. The back side of the cabinets have what [Aereo founder and CEO Chet] Kanojia described as ‘RF transparent windows,’ made of a material that lets TV signals penetrate easily. The converted MPEG-2 video is fed via 10-gigabit fiber-optic cables to a set of servers in the floor below the roof. Aereo has a relatively small space in the data center, but still has plenty of room to add more servers. A rack of transcoders convert the MPEG-2 video into MPEG-4, which is more easily streamed over the Net. Two racks of hard drives, each with 3 terabytes of storage and spinning at 7,200 RPM, stores the data. Aereo saves each customer’s signal to the drives, even if they’re watching live, which is what allows its users to pause and rewind live TV. The drives also store recorded shows, with the amount varying based on whether a customer has the $8 or $12 Aereo plan. When someone wants to watch a show, it’s streamed out through the data center’s big fiber-optic connection to the Internet.” [TechBlog; more info ($)] Photo of Houston West Data Center (probably not the Aereo location) at 5150 Westway Park Blvd.: CyrusOne

03/04/14 12:15pm

Schirra Family in Front of Home on Pine Shadows Dr., Timber Cove, HoustonThe homes depicted in the teevee version of The Astronaut Wives Club may turn out to be a bit more landlocked than the actual Space Age family spreads they’re modeled after. Location scouts for the upcoming ABC mini-series, which will be based on the book by Lily Koppel, appear to be steering clear of the actual Clear Lake-area neighborhoods the original 7 astronaut families lived in — and pushing west instead. Real estate agent Robert Searcy tells Swamplot the location scouts who contacted him were looking for a neighborhood with original-looking mid-fifties-era houses. So he passed info around to owners he knew about, letting them decide if they wanted to open up their homes to teevee crews: “They also contacted Houston Mod,” Searcy says:

“Apparently [the site scouts] are most interested in what they loosely described as ‘mid-range’ homes of the era, not updated. I got them in a few houses in Glenbrook Valley and a couple in Meadowcreek Village, including the Mackie & Kamrath one over there, but I think some of the mods were a bit too grand for what they are looking for. They seem to be most focused on Willowbend right now. So if you live in Willowbend in a non-updated house, don’t be shocked if you get a note on your door!”

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From Timber Cove to Willowbend
09/30/13 4:30pm

WHOSE IS THE UGLIEST YARD OF ALL? The DIY Network is looking for some telegenic eyesores to feature in its groundskeeping soap opera, Desperate Landscapes. Know any? Unfortunately, the call for entries for yards that star contractor Jason Cameron spends 2 frantic days trying to make a bit more presentable doesn’t appear to be a chance for you to get revenge and tattle on your neighbors: To be on the show you’ve got to denigrate — er, nominate your own yard. [Jay TV] Photo of yard on 2000 block of Rainbow Dr.: Allyn West

05/21/12 4:09pm

WEST END REALITY FISH TV When Mexican TV celebrity Aquiles Chávez opened a seafood restaurant in Houston’s West End earlier this year, local English-language media may not have given it the attention a culinary star might expect. But his efforts to open La Fisheria were all the while being filmed by a crew from Colombia. Now Fox-owned Utilisima is planning to air Chávez’s northern saga as a 13-episode reality TV series, Aquiles en Houston, beginning June 10th. (The slower paced video above isn’t from the series, but contains more footage of the restaurant at 4705 Inker than the series trailer put out by the network.) [29-95; Utilisima] Video: FUHA

01/30/12 4:57pm

CRICKET TRAILER TAKES IT OFFLINE How’d the Cricket Trailer do in its national teevee debut last night on Extreme RV, the Travel Channel’s new show? Former furnituremaker-to-the-astronauts Garrett Finney didn’t get top billing in the episode for the second version of his unique 2-wheeler pop-top vehicle, painstakingly crafted in his Woodland Heights workshop — that prize went to Simon Cowell’s behemoth 45-footer motor home. Still, the Cricket website attracted enough attention from the RV early adopter crowd to knock it off its server. From the Cricket’s Facebook page, Finney promises it’ll be back online soon. Update, 1/31: It’s back in business. [Previously on Swamplot]

10/12/11 11:37pm

COMMENT OF THE DAY: GET ME REWRITE! “I’d be surprised if the chamber of commerce didn’t pay for this kind of publicity on a regular basis. . . . it seems like Houston missed an opportunity to get some national visibility via this very popular show. I agree with the concern that there would have been no editorial rights for the city – but then I’d have to ask if you’re so worried about our city looking bad on a TV show, how ’bout improving the city?” [Karen, commenting on Why There’s No Top Chef in Houston]

10/10/11 2:40pm

Wondering why the upcoming season of Bravo’s Top Chef: Texas won’t feature scenes of Houston in any of its 14 episodes — even though state officials gave the production company $400,000 to film the season in Texas? Well, here’s a possible answer: Houston officials refused to fork over an additional $120,000 to the production company, Magical Elves, in return for a single episode to be filmed in Houston. “They were not going to give us any editorial influence for what was shot,” Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau marketing director Lindsey Brown tells the San Antonio Express News. “We just felt it wasn’t worth what they were asking. They could go out to Beaumont and film oil [derricks] for all we know.”

Instead of Houston restaurants and grub, the series will feature 8 full episodes shot in San Antonio, including a faked farmers market at the La Villita village downtown and the highly anticipated return of Pee-Wee Herman to the Alamo basement. Why the San Antonio focus?

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08/15/11 1:50pm

CAN’T SHOWHOUSE YET What can HBJ reporter Jennifer Dawson tell you about the filming she attended over the weekend of 2 Meritage model homes in Fall Creek, for a new HGTV show called Showhouse Showdown? Not a whole lot. Five rooms in each of the 3,000-sq.-ft. houses on Robbie Creek Ln. had been decked out over a period of 3 days by a different interior designer, each wielding a $50,000 budget. The first 150 attendees got to vote on a winner: “I was game for standing outside in the heat, because I was eager to see who won the competition. But, no such luck. HGTV shot the reveal segment twice. Once as if the decorator of House A won. And once as if House B’s designer won. That’s a sure-fire way of making sure the cat doesn’t get out of the bag before the show airs. The producers also didn’t want the designers’ names revealed before the show airs, terms I agreed to. We also weren’t allowed to take pictures inside the houses.” [BizBlog] Photo of “Windrose” model used in competition: Meritage Homes

08/09/11 4:22pm

EXTREMISTS WANT TO COME BACK TO HOUSTON The producers of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition are already looking to return to Houston for another frenetic rebuild — less than a year after volunteers here put up a brand new house (complete with upstairs fashion runway) for the Johnson family in South Union, and showed it off before a national audience. Know a family whose home is “making it difficult, or even impossible, to cope with challenges that face them”? The show’s casting director wants your nominations “for the deserving people and inspiring families that America can really root for.” [abc13; signup; previously on Swamplot] Photos: ABC

06/24/11 2:44pm

ATTACK OF THE TRAFFIC-SIGN ZOMBIES All-things-automotive blog Jalopnik takes uh, credit for the continuing wave of streetside zombie warnings gracing local newscasts nationwide, two-and-a-half years after the publication of their original how-to: “[There’s] no reason to demonize us here at Jalopnik. . . . The reason road signs are still being hacked is because hapless lowest-bid Department of Transportation contractors aren’t protecting their screens from zombified hordes with a simple Master-lock. And we’ll continue to spread that important message until they secure their damn signs — no matter how much the idiots at local news stations call us a ‘hacker website.’ They’re stupid enough to think that’s some kind of an insult. That said we still must remind you kids not to try this at home.” [Jalopnik; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Fox26 Viewer Amy

05/17/11 5:35pm

Oily 3-time Survivor loser Russell Hantz (pictured above in the shark-wrestling competition from Survivor: Samoa) tells Entertainment Weekly he’s come to town “to bring Houston’s economy back on its feet.” How’s he gonna get the market back from its tippy-toes? By flipping houses — then bragging about it on-camera. Apparently, a gig like that pays pretty well.

Hantz’s reputation as a tell-’em-straight kinda guy was sealed in January when the Daily Beast revealed him as the mysterious source of persistent leaks about the reality show’s top-secret storylines. In his contracts, Hantz had agreed to pay “liquidated damages” of $5 million if he revealed which contestants had been eliminated before episode air dates. CBS responded to the breach by suing the message-board commenter who posted the tips — and featuring Hantz in Survivor: Redemption Island, which began airing in February. (The suit against Survivor Sucks website poster Jim Early was dismissed.)

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