LOCATION: Nashville, TN
PRICE: $3,350,000
SIZE: 12,802 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 6 full and 2 half bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Nick Nameless, a helpful little birdie down in the star-studded city of Nashville, was kind enough to let Your Mama know that top-selling singer/songwriter Gary LeVox of the pop-country trio Rascal Flatts two-stepped his Nashville-area mansion on the market with an asking price of $3,350,000.
Iffin Your Mama is being honest—and we always are—we'd come right out and spill it that despite having sold than 21 million albums, toured to sold out audience, and taken home more than 40 industry awards Your Mama wouldn't know a Rascal Flatts ditty if it came up and chawed off our ham hock. However, it didn't take much scroungin' 'round the interweb to figure out that Rascal Flatts' several dozen industry awards include (but are not limited to) six ACMS, five AMAs, six CMTS, seven CMAs, five People's Choice awards, one Grammy, and a star on the famed Hollywood Walk of Fame. Anyways...
Property records we peeped indicate Mister LeVox picked up the sylvan and rolling 2.62 acre property in March 2005 for $295,000 and it is he who is responsible for for the (almost garishly) opulent mansion that current digital marketing materials describe as a "grand Romanesque Villa designed by [Nashville-based architect] Mitchell Barnett."
Lantern-topped pillars and electronically operated iron gates mark the entrance to the multi-acre property that's located in a small, gated enclave of similarly sized mansions. The medium-length driveway slips over a gentle rise before it arrives at a rather grand(iose), double-wide circular drive that hugs a central fountain. A long flight of stone-balustraded steps climb (and climb and climb) up to a soaring, double-height portico with, when turned around facing away from the house, bucolic over-the tree-top views of forested mountains. Current listing details show the 18-room villa has a total of 12,802 square feet on two floors, plus a finished basement. There are five bedrooms, six full and two half bathrooms, at least four fireplaces, and, at either end of the house two two-car attached garages with direct entry.
We're not sure but the lack of personal effects suggests to Your Mama that Mister LeVox and family either prefer a type of day-core that looks and feels like a hotel or they've already vacated their unapologetically decadent suburban Nashville abode that sports an almost exclusively and rigorously adhered to brown, beige, cream and white color palette. The center hall entry has mottled mink and ecru colored inlaid marble floors, a double-height ceiling, and dual staircases that curve and float and were clearly designed with prom photos and over-the-top Christmastime day-core in mind.
A double-columned gallery at the back of the foyer leads to a spacious, step-down formal living room dressed with with a hulking carved stone (or, possibly, poured concrete) mantelpiece, a deep coffered ceiling, and painstakingly swagged and lightly pasamenteried drapery in an almost identical taupe shade to as taupe-colored deep pile wall-to-wall carpeting. The formal dining room has a fabric-paneled wall treatment that probably helps to deafen the clankety-clank of silverware during holiday dinners and both the formal dining room and the office/study that flank the foyer have mottled mink and ecru marble floors, French doors, and a fabric-tented ceiling. Personally, we don't care for or even understand a pleated and fabric-tented ceiling treatment but maybe we're funny that way.
The kitchen, fitted with raised panel cabinetry and chunky carved corbels, can be accessed from the dining room through a sink- and wine fridge-equipped butler's pantry or, less elegantly, directly from the formal living room through doorways on either side of the fireplace. The bullet-shaped kitchen has an a oval-shaped center island, marble tile floors laid on the bias, and dark granite (or some sort of stone) counter tops that seems to be a perfect match to the fireplace surround. The adjoining breakfast room has lots of windows but, as far as Your Mama can tell, no direct access up to the outdoor entertainment areas that run along the back of the house. The service area behind the kitchen includes a small home office with built-in desk and cabinets, a roomy laundry room, a powder room, and back stairs that link to both the upper level bedrooms and the finished basement.
A double-doored main floor master suite has all-but-windowless bedroom with raised corner fireplace as well as a separate sitting room and a wet-bar/morning kitchen. The a custom-fitted walk-in closet and dressing room is as big as a bedroom and a private bathroom offers a two-sink vanity, a marble-lined stall shower, and a soaking tube set awkwardly into a windowed niche (not-surprisingly) dressed with a bespangled balloon shade.
The five upper level bedrooms include a second, chandelier-lit master suite with domed ceiling, a quilted fabric wall treatment, and more swagged and pasamenteried drapery. There's also a corner fireplace, a two-room bathroom suite with super-sized circular bathtub, a compartmentalized and fitted walk-in closet plus an even bigger cedar-lined closet-room, and a private loggia with ceiling fan and fire pit.
There are at least two family room spaces on the upper level and down in the basement there's a game room with full kitchen as well as a home theater with rust-colored, extra- wide wale corduroy upholstered recliners. An extensive cache of listing photos Your Mama perused also show a long, skinny and kinda claustrophobic looking fitness room and several more less-than-optimally-shaped rooms of unknown and/or flexible utility.
For a 2.5+ acre property the usable area of the backyard is surprisingly compact. A curtained loggia with built-in barbecue station overlooks a small-ish, half-moon swimming pool that's set into a hedge-topped curved retaining wall. A think strip of terrace between the house and the swimming pool leads around the side of the house where a sunken trampoline is wedged into a corner of the house. Beyond that there's a flat bit lawn and a playhouse done up in the same "Romanesque Villa" style as the main house.
We're not sure of the LeVox family's future real estate plans but we do know that their old house, the one that's currently for sale, is located in the same small gated enclave south of Nashville where Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban once owned a home and where country superstar Kix Brooks owns a three-story contemporary on XX acres that backs up to an even larger spread with a modern mansion custom-built (and owned) by oft-reported to be divorcing but still touring together NashVegas royals Tim McGraw and Faith Hill.
listing photos: Fridrich & Clark
