1. We’re moving. We don’t know when; we don’t know whereish, but – we’re moving.
2. So, after dropping my mom off at the airport today (WAAAAHHHH), I decided to drive aimlessly around Possible Relocation Parts of Houston for several hours. I bribed the children with multiple trips to Buc-ee’s.
3. I’m just not a master-planned community kind of girl. Look, this is the house (once bohemian, now insanely expensive) I grew up in:
I mean, do we see why this is the ideal house? The paradigm of housey goodness? It is both a Craftsman-style cottage AND a hugely massive, impractically-floor-planned adventure zone. The entire top floor was once a sleeping porch; it was built in 1914; it has the best dogwood tree in the world for climbing.
I just cannot bring myself to be impressed by a subdivision called “Shmaradigm Cove.” (actual name of subdivision edited so as not to offend the residents thereof).
4. I guess that’s the formula these days for naming master-planned communities. Businessy-sounding name, plus landscape formation.
THE VISTA at Synergy
LEVERAGE Oaks
COOPETITION of the Towne Pointe Lakeside Shoppes
5. Dear Realtor Website: Fine. I will register at your site so that I can see the additional five photos of your listing, even though I already know they will show a gas grill on a concrete slab from five different angles, nothing more. But I will use my Special Annoying Email Account, I will never check it, and I will not choose you to be my realtor, all because you were hiding your photos behind some registration wall.
6. Just be honest about the trees. I can tell that you’ve structured the shot to include a leafy branch from a sapling you just bought at Houston Garden Centers. I see no shade. I’m looking on satellite view. I know there’s no trees in your yard. Represent.
7. It sure is a good thing this house is stocked with four different kinds of cake.
22 Comments
I know that house!
(I’m suffering from dreadful insomnia, so what am I doing? Reading your QTs.)
Kate Wicker recently posted..Just a Personal Reminder
I thought about that, Kate, when I posted the photo! Love that house.
Dorian Speed recently posted..Take the Cakes
I’m not easily ismpresed. . . but that’s impressing me!
Your growing-up house Rocks My World. You have been unfitted for suburban blandness through the ministrations of aesthetic awesomeness.
MrsDarwin recently posted..This Issues A Bust
Well, clearly, I just need to print that up on a certificate and show it to the realtor.
Dorian Speed recently posted..Take the Cakes
Is this in Five Points? It looks familiar. Just move back here. I like that.
It is – it’s a block from the intersection. When we lived there, what’s now the fancy fire station was a run-down hotel called the Downtowner. Good times, good times.
I see that our old house is STILL for sale, two years later.
Dorian Speed recently posted..Take the Cakes
I heart your old house! I love to drive through the neighborhood in Austin where I grew up – it was beautiful then, beautiful now, “bohemian” would have been an apt description when we lived there. Now many of the houses in that same neighborhood cost – literally – 100 times more than they did when my parents purchased our house in the late 60′s. I don’t know when I’ll get over being shocked by that.
I have a friend who lives in one of those master planned communities….they do suck you in with their waterparks and jogging trails. That’s where all the leveraged oaks are, btw, in case you don’t want to register to see the pics.
Wow! I love that house.
MelanieB recently posted..Book Notes- The Winds of Marble Arch by Connie Willis
Sigh. I am the product of a boring house in the suburbs. I live in a boring house in the suburbs. I’ve lived in more interesting houses, but they were all rentals. At least I don’t live in a planned community, and I can walk to the library on this beautiful, very warm (for MA in February) day. There are compensations. Our “downtown” has a classic village green of the it-really-dates-back-300-years ilk. It’s pretty in springtime. But I can be a little jealous of that lovely home, Dorian.
A spectacular house.
Christian recently posted..Straight Down the Toilet
That means a lot, coming from an architect, even one who has just posted “straight down the toilet.”
I can be relied on not to sugarcoat a professional opinion.
Christian recently posted..Asparagus me- Lord
Love that house! Dorian, you must come and visit “The” ultra-suburb north of Houston. We are actually in an old neighborhood surrounded by The new suburbia (my husband swore we’d never live in a community starting with “The”). But our Catholic homeschool group out here is over 100 families and wonderful. In my experience, it seems most of the Catholic, homeschooling, NFP families can only afford suburbia. Or if they can afford swanky city, they’d rather choose acreage in the country! Hope you find a place with real trees!
Blair recently posted..Thomas William- almost 5 mos
Blair, can you email me? (actually, I guess I could email YOU, now, couldn’t I?) Are you referring to ARCH as the Catholic homeschool group? I would really love to find out more about the Catholic homeschooling “scene” in Houston. My husband is being transferred to Lake Jackson, so we are looking for somewhere that’s a reasonable commute for him – my travels took me to Missouri City and thereabouts.
Sure I’ll send you an email!
Blair recently posted..Thomas William- almost 5 mos
Oh, what a fabulous house! Yes, that kind of thing does spoil you for anything else. We lived in a 1950s burb in Memphis, which I loved; when we moved to NC, we opted for a small town with a longish commute for my husband, because we could afford the kind of house here that we couldn’t afford closer to the college where he teaches, but which we really wanted. No regrets, though of course the big old house does come with the big-old-house peeling wallpaper and, until very recently, the no-dishwasher kitchen (also the big-old-house utility bills, which came as a bit of a shock, even though on paper we had an idea of what they might be). Still, we love it and don’t mind the distance from work so much. We can’t imagine not knowing our friends here, whom we would never have met had we not decided to live in the provinces. Still, people seem to think we’ve gone to extreme lengths for the sake of a rather shabby house, and maybe they’re right . . .
Speaking of neighborhood transformations, in the late 1980s I lived in an old-house-turned-quadruplex in what was then a very boho area of Charlotte, NC. My rent was under $200, and one night my neighbor’s wife had her throat slashed in our driveway (only a flesh wound — thankfully — but traumatic for her, obviously, and pretty unsettling for the rest of us). When we moved back to this area, the first time I went to Charlotte I drove by that house, which is now a half-million-dollar single-family property . . . Just wow. It is lovely, though.
Sally Thomas recently posted..Overheard By Aelred in the Grocery Checkout Line
Hey, thanks, everybody!
You know what the thing is about living in an older house? Less pressure to keep the house immaculate and the furnishings de rigeur. I feel that an old, wacky house would better suit my erratic housekeeping and decorating style.
When we were looking for our house (over 10 years ago), one of our list of requirements for our realtor was “No developments” — meaning none of the planned communities you’re referring to. We’re in a suburb in a old town with a real Main Street (with Memorial Day parades and all). Technically, some call our neighborhood a development because parcels were sold off 40 years ago for building lots. But the big difference was that each buyer could use whichever builder and plan they wanted — so we don’t have streets full of Model A, B and C!
My sister, on the other hand, lives in the South and much prefers those communities with the tight neighbors and amenities — and newer houses with all of the right features. It’s ON her list of requirements on their many moves. I love her, but we really have different priorities and tastes!!
Best of luck house hunting — for the house and actual community (people and parish)!
I know what you mean about naming housing additions. A field near where I grew up is now, “Richman PLatz at the Settlement.”
I guess I get the Richman part–because the houses are pretty big. But where in THE hell did they get the “settlement” part of it? It’s in the middle of a field with NOTHING else around it.
Because the subdivision was funded out of a legal settlement related to the land in some way…like, I don’t know, fake crop circles.
Dorian Speed recently posted..Seven quick takes