Sprockets and Preps, Can They Live in Harmony?

Will the neighbors living in the traditional homes on the 3800 block of Mockingbird welcome  the residents building this new super-mod structure? I can’t help but imagine the little kids looking like sprockets in black turtlenecks answering the door when preppy kids, wearing crisp tennis whites, bring a “welcome” box of Sprinkles cupcakes.

By Merritt Patterson May. 19, 2011 | 11:22 am | 32 Comments | Comments RSS
32 comments to "Sprockets and Preps, Can They Live in Harmony?"
  1. kmom @ May 19, 2011 at 11:37 am
    that white square is a house? is it really small?

  2. 3boys mom @ May 19, 2011 at 12:14 pm
    That’s just plain awful. I thought it was a large construction van. I feel bad for the neighbors – their house values just decreased.

  3. CHC @ May 19, 2011 at 12:48 pm
    It looks like a storage locker to me. Really funny next to the faux castle next door!

  4. A. B. @ May 19, 2011 at 1:02 pm
    LOL, it will be like “Different Strokes”, Parkie style. I wonder why the super mod house only built on 1/2 the lot. Can’t wait to see how it turns out.

  5. grump @ May 19, 2011 at 1:05 pm
    Merritt-You live in an alternate reality.
    You know the kids won’t go there because that house(and therefore the inhabitants), is different. The moms will talk behind their backs and the dads will wait and see if the kids are good at athletics.

  6. UPMomofboys @ May 19, 2011 at 1:34 pm
    I thought it was a double-tall/double-wide. Horrible.

  7. Neal @ May 19, 2011 at 1:36 pm
    It looks like a dump and is taking forever to finish. Is it even up to code?

  8. Eloise @ May 19, 2011 at 1:48 pm
    “Their house values just decreased”?!?!?!?! Really? I think that’s a major stretch of the imagination. The modern house folks were probably able to buy the lot at a discount BECAUSE the crappy Euro-castle-McMansion hulk was already there.

  9. kmom @ May 19, 2011 at 2:14 pm
    There’s a house behind that wall? GET OUT! At the beginning of construction on some houses they prop up a lil wall with different finishes, paint, bricks, etc. on it to compare before building. It looks like a large one of those, sans the finishes. Someone find out how many square feet it is!

  10. HPMom @ May 19, 2011 at 2:46 pm
    4,000 including garage

    20×100

  11. mainzer @ May 19, 2011 at 3:06 pm
    I am a big fan of contemporary and out of the ordinary architecture, but right now I cannot see the allure of that house. I am very interested in seeing how it turns out and I hope that the final product is attractive. I will reserve my judgement until it is finished and in the meantime will applaud whoever is behind it for thinking “out of the box”!

  12. A. B. @ May 19, 2011 at 3:17 pm
    @kmom–that wall IS the house!

  13. Michael in HP @ May 19, 2011 at 3:26 pm
    Based on the house, HP needs to establish some architectural guidelines that would prevent such a building, which decreases the value of the surrounding homes and community as a whole.

  14. House @ May 19, 2011 at 10:40 pm
    Calm yourselves. That is not a house. It’s Curtain No 3 on “Let’s Make a Deal.”

  15. XT @ May 19, 2011 at 11:40 pm
    @grump, sadly, you speak the truth, except you forgot that the mom’s are just as nuts as the dads regarding sports

  16. observer @ May 20, 2011 at 2:38 am
    Really! How would you feel if that was stuffed in next to you?

  17. kmom @ May 20, 2011 at 10:03 am
    Is it made out of “white board” material”, so you can write on it with markers then erase it?

  18. missie @ May 20, 2011 at 11:01 am
    I’ve seen some great modern design in HP. Is that the side of the house facing the street? This is a case of the house not fitting the landscape and lot well.

  19. Gringo @ May 20, 2011 at 11:35 am
    Would love to look out my window straight into a white, sheetmetal wall. I can’t help but think the interior walls are padded…

  20. New Math @ May 20, 2011 at 12:02 pm
    20 x 100 = 4,000. Really?

  21. Eloise @ May 20, 2011 at 2:34 pm
    @Michael in HP – So you want HP to become one big HOA with people telling other people exactly what kind of house they can build, what color, what surfaces, etc? And to repeat the fallacy that this house will “decrease the value of the surrounding homes and community as a whole” is just ignorance – sorry.

    I don’t mean come across as spiteful or anything, but just because you might like fake Italian McMansions is no reason for you to be able to tell the guy next to you that he can’t build something modern, or fake French, or Nordic, or whatever.

    FYI: Modern (and especially mid-century modern) houses typically sell for MORE per square foot than the standard faux majestic house that is so prevalent. So this house may actually be helping property values.

    And anyways – the whole property value thing is a fraud: nothing less than DISD taking over HPISD can hurt HP property values!

  22. not a mom @ May 20, 2011 at 4:31 pm
    you wouldn’t happen to be the same people who want less gov’t rules, would you? but want rules for building? hmmm. what constitutes “the right” house for this area? and what happened to diversity? if all is the same, that means it’s like Plano, doesn’t it?

    could be this “box” won’t need the maintenance that these out of date styles require. we’ll see.

    i’d sure hate to be your neighbor – a bunch of judgemental people that obviously can’t embrace difference. isn’t this a lesson that even schools espouse?

  23. What In The World Are They Building at 3809 Mockingbird? @ May 20, 2011 at 5:18 pm
    [...] home going up over on Mockingbird a few months ago? Owned by a Lim Lin of Murphy, Texas. Today Merritt Patterson had something up about it in the Park Cities People Blog, and what concerns me is there doesn’t seem to be a lot of progress made since March 10. (See [...]

  24. missie @ May 20, 2011 at 7:01 pm
    @Eloise I like what your saying and I live in a mid-century modern.

  25. B @ May 20, 2011 at 9:56 pm
    @New Math – 2 stories, so 20×100 does equal 4,000

  26. bob's mom @ May 21, 2011 at 7:19 am
    that fake castle on the right is pretty terrible, too. i’d find that disturbing to live next too, to.

  27. bob's mom @ May 21, 2011 at 7:27 am
    oops, i meant “to, too” but hadn’t had my coffee yet. my comment was to communicate that there are a lot of unattractive houses around here and that beauty is certainly in the eye of the beholder. if it were up to me, these fake houses–castles, megiterraneans and chateaus wouldn’t be allowed. to “poser” for my taste.

  28. Chelsey @ May 21, 2011 at 8:21 am
    Not a mom – hmmm – all is the same? When I drive around the Park Cities I see plenty of diversity. Your comments make me question your intellectual capacity since even my four year old knows a square peg doesn’t fit in a round hole.

  29. HPMom @ May 21, 2011 at 11:00 am
    2 Stories of 20 x 100, guess I need to simplify a bit when communicating with y’all.

  30. E22 @ May 23, 2011 at 1:26 pm
    @Eloise — I think it would decrease the value of surrounding homes or they would just NEVER sell. If my ultimate dream house at an amazing price was next door, or worse across the street from this house, I wouldn’t buy it! I would not want to look at that every single day! Hopefully, the landscaping will help!

  31. T-Bone @ May 28, 2011 at 4:58 pm
    I’m sure the landscaping will cure most concerns…………….

  32. bromar @ November 4, 2011 at 2:12 pm
    Yeah they should totally put some big castle turrets on the corners and add a fake facade of brick and stone veneer. I agree that it looks a bit stark but the house to the right looks like a castle that got addicted to cheeseburgers.

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