This reinvented Ranch on Staunton St. in Afton Oaks has had a little work done since the last time it was on the market — way back in April of last year, at around $400K cheaper than its current price tag. That American colonial look is gone, wrapped by layers of stucco and Hardie panels and a new standing-seam metal roof. Other nips and tucks for the 60-year-old include a ceiling lift, a new fixed-in-place fenestration program, and a few hundred sq. ft. of additions.

A couple before-and-after comparisons for the 3-bedroom, 2,688-sq.-ft. redo:

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The back yard before:

And after:

The den before:

And after:

The kitchen before:

And after:

You get the idea. The rest of the new digs:

Inside that new garage apartment in back:

Also included: a built-in mosquito retirement system and a closed-circuit security camera for your front door. All just showed up on the market yesterday, for $899,500.

• 4606 Staunton St. and 2009 version [HAR]

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Commercial and Community Structures

• Houston Chapel, 501 E. 18th St. 77008 (garage)
• Schlumberger Technology, Bldg. E, 6501 Navigation Blvd. 77011
• Meadow Wood Elementary School, 14230 Memorial Dr. 77079 (Spring Branch ISD; 5 buildings)

Residences

• 3251 Elgin St. 77004
• 4504 Lockwood Dr. 77026 (Kashmere Gardens)
• 2340 Shakespeare St. 77030
• 14019 Queensbury Ln. 77079 (Nottingham West; new construction by Realex Homes)

• Upper Kirby: “Someone is conducting a traffic study along the Southwest Freeway at Greenbriar,” a reader reports. “Is that someone finally going to build on the vacant block between 59 and Lexington?” Someone? Anyone?

Photo: Swamplot inbox

Texas Southern University President John Rudley is now saying he gave the order to paint over 2 murals in Hannah Hall created 40 years ago by longtime TSU art professor Harvey Johnson. An earlier official statement issued by the university — and an abc13 story last week — had claimed the whitewashing had been a “mistake.” But Rudley fesses up to the Chronicle:

Rudley said the murals, which covered two walls in the Hannah Hall administration building, had become eyesores.

“When I bring dignitaries to campus, I can’t have them seeing that kind of thing,” Rudley said. “All art isn’t good art.”

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Mural painting is a required course for TSU art students, and for decades the halls of the administration building have served as a canvas for the works of seniors. “Some murals have obviously been more successful than others,” wrote art museum director Alvia Wardlaw in her book on the murals of longtime TSU professor John Biggers, who founded the university art program in 1949. “After a few months those which do not pass the test of repeated viewing are painted over, and those segments are assigned to other students. It is a great challenge to a student to be given a chance to paint a mural which may become a permanent part of a busy building, viewed by thousands each year.”

Johnson was a student and later a colleague of Biggers who collaborated with him on several mural projects a few years before his mentor’s death in 2001. Johnson’s destroyed murals, “Mothers of ‘the Father and the Son’,” (top) and “Dere’s a ‘Han Writin on de Wall’” (below) had survived repeated viewings since he painted them as a senior himself, in 1971.

• TSU paints over murals created by retired prof [Houston Chronicle]
• Artist, students upset about painted-over mural at TSU [abc13]
• Legacy [The Houston Murals of John Thomas Biggers]

Photos: Sarah Trotty (murals); TSU (Hannah Hall)

Is there a historic district in Chelsea Place? A couple demos says there is:

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Commercial Structures

• Almeda Chateau Apartments, Bldg. 13, 10802 Kingspoint Rd. 77075 (boiler room)

Residences

• 3611 McIlhenny St. 77004 (Leeland Park)
• 7 Chelsea Blvd. 77006 (Chelsea Place Historical District)
• 7 1/2 Chelsea Blvd. 77006 (Chelsea Place Historical District)
• 1433 Alexander St. 77008 (shed)
• 7505 Jay St. 77028 (Homestead)
• 8405 Howton St. 77028 (East Houston; shed)

In from Swamplot roving photographer Candace Garcia: photos of the last moments of the UT Health Science Center’s Mental Science Institute at 1300 Moursund St. in the Med Center. The school’s department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences deserted the 1965 structure back in February, when it moved to a brand new 6-story Behavioral and Biomedical Sciences building near the corner of Cambridge and OST, south of the main Med Center campus in a new development dubbed UT Research Park. The vacant Moursund building was sold to the building executioners at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, who are now busy demolishing it “for future expansion.”

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A view of the way things used to be, back when everything was the way it used to be:

• UTHealth celebrates opening of Behavioral and Biomedical Sciences Building and UT Health Science Center Breaking Ground on New Research Facility [UTHealth]

Photos: M.D. Anderson Cancer Center (bottom); Candace Garcia (all others)