LOCATION: Bell Canyon, CA
PRICE: $1,699,000
SIZE: 4,466 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: A friendly little birdie left a celebrity real estate egg in our digital nest to let Your Mama and the children know that soap story veteran John Aniston slapped a $1,699,000 price tag on his mock-Med micro-mansion* in the guard-gated Bell Canyon enclave in far western reaches of the San Fernando Valley where Los Angeles County turns to Ventura County.**
As many of y'all may have guessed or known, John Aniston is the Greece-born father of sit-com star turned rom-com queen turned gossip glossy catnip Jennifer Aniston. He was, however and to be sure, a veteran showbizzer long before Miss Aniston could have ever dreamed tens of millions of people around the world would develop a loyal and emotional relationship to her hair. The still-working octogenarian actor currently shakes his Tinseltown money maker as the mustachioed mobster Victor Kiriakis on the daytime soap opera Days of Our Lives. Except for a brief period in 2004 when he was killed off and then discovered alive on an island, the three-time Soap Opera Digest Award winner has appeared on the venerable if divinely cheesy soap opera continuously since 1986.
Property records tell Your Mama that Mister Aniston and his second wife, seemingly retired actress Sherry Rooney, purchased the 1.52 acre hilltop estate in affluent Bell Canyon in late 2004 for $1,399,000. They bought the British bass guitarist John McVie of Fleetwood Mac fame and fortune. Current listing information shows the slightly angled, two-story residence was built in 1988 wth five bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms in 4,486 square feet.
Your Mama can imagine the builder's intent for the reasonably large house was to provide occupants a comfortably spacious and maybe even semi-luxurious but hardly lavish lifestyle. The relatively unobstructed mountain views are certainly nice and so is the long driveway and generous motor court. But, children, this opinionated and possibly snobby property gossip is left a wee bit breathless and wobbly-kneed over the spectacular ordinariness of the finishes, fittings, and furnishings. Fer chrissakes, there's a rather forlorn basketball hoop affixed to the roof's edge over the attached (and front-facing) three-car garage. A basketball hoop is tolerable—if still incredibly ugly—if there are basketball playing age children in residence who actually use the damn thing. But for a couple of a certain age, even those with basketball playing age grandchildren who might use it when they visit, it feels a little undignified. Simple solution, though...Call Hiymay the Handyman and have him take it down. Done.
Matters, we're afraid, don't get much better inside. Listen, puppies, Your Mama can live with the Mexican paver tiles that run throughout much of the main floor but we are on a knife's unfriendly edge over the Victorian era-esque navy blue and floral pattern wall-to-wall carpeting the runs up the unexpectedly sculptural staircase in the double-height center hall entrance and along the meandering second floor landings and corridors. With all due respect to Mister and Missus Aniston—against whom we hold no grudge, that is just not an acceptable carpeting choice. Arguably that carpeting isn't a good choice for any house but even Mister Magoo can see it is not a wise choice at all for this house. The carpet, like the basketball hoop, is an easily remedied and relatively inexpensive decorative situation and, obviously, not one that has any bearing on the real (or perceived) value of the house and property.
The formal living room has a much more benign (if not exactly swell) wall-to-wall carpeting treatment, a fireplace, direct access to the outdoors, and pea green paint on the walls. The blood-red formal dining room, on the other hand, has a heavy-duty coffer-style ceiling and a giant multi-paned picture window with operable folding shutters that assist with light and privacy modulation. A compact office/library has built in book shelves, storage cabinetry, and an extra-wide window not to mention what looks like an unfortunate and unnecessary beige recliner.
The paver tile floors in the foyer run into the roomy center island eat-in kitchen that appears to be updated with newer and higher-grade appliances and have buff-toned ceramic tile counter tops atop buttery brown and hardware-free raised panel cabinetry. And, yes, children, Your Mama sees that over-worked pot rack over the center work island but, today, we choose to do the Biblically-encouraged thing and, you know, turn the other cheek.
There's a second fireplace in a family room with built-in storage cabinets for board games, flash lights and other paraphernalia. Deep-pile mossy-green carpeting that, honest to goodness, butter beans, sends cold shivers deep into Your Mama's sensitive decorative heart was inexplicably installed—brace yourselves—wall-to-wall.
The upper floor master suite is complete with a private balcony, a sitting room with fireplace, and a built-in entertainment center. The walk-in closet has a custom clothing storage and hanging system and the newly renovated master bathroom has radiant heated marble floors, double-vanities with marble counters, heated towel racks, spa tub and a separate tumbled marble steam shower.
A couple of the main floor rooms—or maybe it's many of them, we don't know—open to a Mexican paver-tiled terrace that runs along the entire length of the obtusely angled rear of the residence and has a built-in barbecue and a trellis-covered dining terrace. A grotto-style swimming pool set into an engineered tumble of (probably faux) boulders and waterfalls sits pretty dam far below the house. So far below, Your Mama can imagine, that residents and/or guests who suffer from T.B.B.S.—that would be Tiny Booze Bladder Syndrome—should probably think twice about that third gin & tonic before a late afternoon swim.
Your Mama has no inside intel on what Mister and Missus Aniston's future real estate desires and/or plans may be. Perhaps they'll set up camp in to the (probably quite luxurious) guesthouse of Jenny Aniston's recently refurbished mid-century modern estate in Bel Air? Probably not, but don't y'all think that would be a reality show that more people that any of us would care to admit out loud would watch with a bizarrely fervid faithfulness? Yes, we thought so, too. Anyways...
*For Your Mama's purposes let's define a residence sized 4-6,000 thousand square feet a micro-mansion and an abode of 6-8,000 square feet a mini-mansion. A dwelling between eight and 15 thousand square feet let's call a small mansion and any domicile over 15,000 but less than 25,000 square feet gets labelled as a proper mansion. We designate single-family homes between 25 and 45,000 mega-mansions and anything over 45,000 square feet is—let's be honest, chickens—just a stupid amount of space.
**Believe it or not, Your Mama is way too busy to watch the daytime stories so we really have no idea how frequently Mister Aniston appears on Days of Our Lives. However, it took about 4.5 seconds with an online mapping service to calculate that it is a 25-ish mile commute to the Burbank studios where Days tapes on a particularly grim stretch of Highway 101 as it runs along the congested base of the Santa Monica Mountains through the southern border of the San Fernando Valley.
listing photos: Coldwell Banker
