Annie Leibovitz Re-Lists Urban Compound

SELLER: Annie Leibovitz
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $29,900,000
SIZE: 10,200 square feet

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: After failing to sell at when it was listed in December 2012 for $33 million, celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz has re-listed her townhouse compound in the heart of New York City's West Village, as was first reported by the peeps at Luxury Listings NYC (via The Real Deal), with a new photographs, previously unseen floor plans, and much lower $29.9 million price tag.

Property records show Miz Leibovitz acquired the larger of the two townhouses for $4.15 million in 2002 and the next year shelled out another $1.87 million for the smaller, wedge shaped townhouse that that's attached but, according to our interpretation of the floor plans now included with digital marketing materials, remains otherwise separate from the larger residence.

Listing details show the entire urban compound spans roughly 10,200 square feet and has been meticulously renovated and restored with all new plumbing and electrical systems, original stoops and doors, and more than 70 new landmark-approved wooden windows.

The smaller, wedge shaped townhouse, according to Your Mama's read of the floor plan, has a private entrance, a combination living/dining/kitchen with fireplace, a windowless basement, a bedroom (with fireplace) and hall bathroom on the second floor and another, larger bedroom on the third floor, also with fireplace.

The larger, 40-foot wide townhouse appears to Your Mama to once have been two separate townhouses and also appears to only be connected down in the sub-basement and up on the top level by a wide, sky-lit corridor. We counted seven bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms plus staff bedroom in the basement and a self-contained two story guest house with one more bedroom, another bathroom, a kitchenette, and two fireplaces.

The larger townhouse also two forty-foot long loft-like living and dining rooms, each with two fireplaces, a small but expensively equipped kitchen with stainless steel cabinetry and a built-in banquette, a second floor library, two laundry rooms—one in the basement the other on the top floor, at least 10 fireplaces—although we have no idea how many of them remain functional, and way down in the sub-basement, a handful of walk-in storage closets and a separate, walk-in safe.

The commodious master suite is complete with bedroom and sitting room—both with fireplaces, an adjoining office, several closets and loads of built-ins, and, finally, a compact but well outfitted bathroom with a street-facing window.

As far as Your Mama's research shows, Miz Leibovitz still owns a 200-ish acre country spread in Rhinebeck, NY.

listing photos and floor plan: Corcoran

Rockstar's Russ Weiner Flipping Out in Hermosa Beach

SELLER: Russ Weiner
LOCATION: Hermosa Beach, CA
PRICE: $13,900,000
SIZE: 6,200 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 5.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: In July (2013), luxe-living (and unfortunately named) RockStar energy drink mogul Russ Goldencloud Weiner—yeppers, puppies, that's really his middle name—shelled out exactly $10 million for a modern, beach front residence in Hermosa Beach, CA. Just a month later, we first learned from the ever-vigilant real estate yenta Yolanda Yakkeyyak, the 30-something year old orange-haired entrepreneur flipped the property back on the market with a substantially higher $13.9 million price tag.

Listing details show Mister Weiner's four-floor beach house sits cheek to jowl with the neighboring houses and was built brand new about six years ago with has a total of six bedrooms and 5.5 bathrooms in about 6,200 square feet of interior space.

A bi-level, marble-floored entry with sinuous stainless steel stair railings and a huge circular skylight that floods the space with natural light leads to the also marble-floored main floor living spaces that includes a formal dining room and a compact den with stainless-steel fireplace surround. The main living space is a spacious, open-plan space with more marble floors, a fireplace, and a clean-lined kitchen outfitted with walnut cabinetry, four-stool breakfast bar, and sleek stainless steel Euro-style appliances that include a built-in coffee maker. A wide, curved wall of glass doors fold open to a slender (and marble-floored) patio with panoramic beach and ocean views.

Three of the six bedrooms are located in the basement along with a kitchenette-equipped family room and a home theater with newly installed 3-D projection equipment. There are two more bedrooms on the second floor, including a spacious master suite with walk-in closet, ocean-side terrace, and a fireplace surmounted by a grotesquely-sized 90-in flat screen television. The attached master bathroom, slathered in marble, has twin sinks, a glass-enclosed steam shower, a separate sauna, and a jetted tub set in front of some sort of mural of jellyfish. A sixth bedroom—currently set up as a work-out room, according to marketing materials, perches up on the uppermost third level where there's a crowded-looking roof terrace with outdoor fireplace and free-standing spa.

Other amenities and luxuries, as per listing details, include a state-of-the-art home automation system with integrated tough panel controls, three-car garage plus additional guest parking, and a five-stop elevator.

Mister Weiner, the Las Vegas-based politically active son of vitriolic right wing radio host Michael Savage, has a long history of purchasing high-priced properties and quickly putting them back on the market with with large mark-ups.

In early 2010 Mister Weiner paid $6.75 million for a 19,000 square water front monster mansion on Palm Island in Miami Beach (FL). The property was formerly owned by high-flying hip-hop music producer turned bankrupt cocaine addict Scott Storch who, like Icarus, flew to close to the sun lost the mansion to foreclosure. Mister Weiner quickly turned around and listed the property in late 2010 for an incredulously optimistic $20,000,000 but didn't manage to unload it until September 2012 when rapper and Cash Money Records founder Bryan "Birdman" Williams came along and shelled out $14.5 million dollars for the super-sized spread.

Your Mama's research shows Mister Weiner continues to own an almost 10,000 square foot mansion in the Beverly Park enclave that he scooped up for $15 million in 2007 and had on and off the market between March 2009 and February 2011 at a variety of rose-tinted prices that went as high as $28,000,000. Property records also show that in March 2009 the real estate mad Mister Weiner dropped $11,600,000 for a gated, 1.48 acre ocean front spread in Delray Beach, FL with a 14-ish thousand square foot mansion with, according to listing details from the time of the purchase, seven bedrooms, seven full and three half bathrooms, an 8-car air-conditioned garage, a separate guest house, swimming pool, and tennis court. In typical fashion, Mister Weiner flipped the property back on the market just a month later for $17,500,000 but failed to sell it and took it off the market in March 2010.

listing photos: Shorewood Realtors

Bunny Mellon's Former Mansion Up For Grabs Again

Although it's 72% smaller than the 62,000 square foot Residence at River House and currently listed for a whole lot less money—$46 million, to be exact—a super-duper rich person with a yen for a New York City trophy property could do a whole lot worse than the downright aristocratic, double-wide townhouse mansion that was custom built in the mid-1960s for sick-rich American banking heir Paul Mellon and his second wife, Rachel Lambert Mellon, herself an heiress to a mouthwash fortune—her grandfather invented Listerine—who is otherwise known in her upper class social circles as as Bunny.

The 40-foot wide, mid-block mansion—current listing details describe the house as "NeoFrench classic style" and 2006 listings called "Paris in New York:—on a particularly tony stretch of tree-lined East 70th Street between Park and Lexington Avenues, stands five stories above ground and measures in at a considerable 11,100-ish square feet.

The Mellon mansion's current owners, Irish businessman Tony White and his wife Clare according to property records, purchased the property directly from Miz Mellon in July 2006 for $22,500,000. Miz Mellon, a high-cultured philanthropist and accomplished horticulturist who presides over a bucolic estate in Upperville, VA that encompasses thousands of acres, is now more than 100 years old and over the last few years has divested herself of much of her private real estate portfolio. In 2009 she sold an Manhattan townhouse, also on East 70th Street, for $13.5 million to former Morgan Stanley CEO John J. Mack and this year, the children may recall, Miz Mellon sold a 26-acre water-front Cape Cod compound to multi-billionaire mining magnate William "Bill" Koch for $19.5 million. Anyways...

Using the floor plan provided with digital marketing materials Your Mama counted six bedrooms, eight full and four half bathrooms (plus a w/c in the basement), three kitchens, at least five fireplaces, two laundry rooms, and more than three dozen closets and half a dozen walk-in storage rooms. We calculated nearly 2,500 square feet of private outdoor space, all designed once upon a time by Miz Mellon who, don't cha know, also re-designed the Rose Garden at the White House for her long-time gal pal Jackie Kennedy. (For the record: 2006 listings indicate there are five staff bedrooms but we didn't see them marked on the floor plan included with current online marketing materials.)

Mister and Missus Mellon's Big Apple mansion replaced a pair of mid-19th century townhouses and was—as was and remains the expensive custom of the very rich—custom-built to their own specifications, which may explain the huge house's somewhat idiosyncratic configuration.

Although as large as a suburban macmansion, it appears to Your Mama that the townhouse lacks a proper, guest-impressing staircase. It's almost rare as a unicorn for a house of this stature not to have a grand staircase that, at the very least, links the piano nobile to the floor above and/or below, but alas. Certainly the mansion's main staircase is expertly crafted and finely finished with exquisite materials that only rich people can afford but it is, none-the-less, practically hidden in the far back corner of the residence where it can not be easily ogled at by the Chinese food delivery man. Only slightly more conveniently located next to the main stair case is an elevator that serves all six floors of living space.

Also peculiar compared to more standard Manhattan townhouse layouts is that the informal family quarters—kitchen, family room, study, and one of the two laundry rooms—were settled on the second floor while the grandly dressed public rooms—drawing room and dining room connected by a couple of vestibules—were placed high up on the third floor where they spill out through numerous French doors to an elevated courtyard garden. There's also a formally arranged garden off the back of the ground floor where, in addition to a decent-sized staff bedroom and bathroom, there's also a library/office with fireplace and direct access to the rear garden, an adjoining study nook, a small secondary kitchen, and two powder rooms.

The fourth floor is devoted entirely to adjoining double master suites and there are three more moderately-sized en suite guest/family bedroom on the fifth. The Mellons, as y'all may have noticed from your own perusals of the floor plan including with current marketing materials, did up the master suite up in manner Your Mama might call Old School High Wasp wherein the Mister and Missus of the house maintain completely separate—if adjoining—suites with individual bedrooms and, preferably—as is the case in the Mellon manse, with separate dressing areas and separate en-suite facilities.

If $130 million for 62,000 square feet of raw space at River House is financially out of the question and $46 million for a pedigreed townhouse on what is arguably one of the best (and most expensive) residential blocks in all of Manhattan is still too rich for your trophy property seeking pocketbook, low-profile but obviously prodigiously wealthy financier Peter C. R. Huang as re-listed his titanic, palatial 14-room duplex apartment at the preposterously posh 740 Park Avenue for $29,500,000 after failing to sell it back in 2008 with it popped up for sale with a much higher $38,000,000 price tag. Almost seems like a bargain, don't it?

listing photos and floor plan: Sotheby's International Realty

Recording The Show * Nas Gravações do Programa

For those who did not see yesterday's special episode of the show, special episode, here are some pictures of best moments. For those who saw it probably went through the same thing I did. I was sitting on the sofa sobbing when suddenly when bloopers came I was crying with laughter. I will not tell because for those who have not had an opportunity will see the reruns throughout the week. I will post the video here on the blog later this week, for the ones who cannot watch the show. 

Anyway I have to introduce to you our most dearest production assistant Claudia (AKA as Lau for friends), who was the victim of our team's pranks.

Only a wonderful and dear human being as Lau, to laugh during the rest of the afternoon after what they did to her! You are the dearest human being Lau, and had to be a part of this show! We love you!

***

Para quem não viu ontem a estreia do Querido Mudei a Casa, episódio especial, estes são alguns dos momentos do programa. Para quem viu, provavelmente passou pelo mesmo que eu. Fiquei lavada em lágrimas e depois acabei às gargalhadas, com o momento final nos apanhados. Não vou contar, porque para quem ainda não teve oportunidade vale a pena ver, mas tenho de vos apresentar a nossa mais Querida Claudia (Lau para os amigos), que faz parte da equipa de produção do programa e que foi vítima da partida dos queridos. Foi pena não ter ficado gravado mas asseguro-vos que o narizito pronunciado do nosso Querido João, também não acabou em muito bom estado! ahahahah ;))))

Só mesmo um ser humano maravilhoso como a Lau, para acontecer uma coisa daquelas e se ficar a rir durante o resto da tarde! Os Queridos fazem partidas a toda a gente mas a Lau já é quase uma mascote de todos nós, e eles adoram pregar-lhe partidas destas!... 

 

És linda Lauzinha e só podias mesmo vir parar ao Querido Mudei a Casa! 

Até Amanhã

Ana Antunes

(Thank you for sharing my passion for beautiful homes)

Friendship

F R I E N D S H I P

 

 

Love you Chezza, wishing all the very best in your new adventure.
Will miss you lots and lots xx

"THIS GIRL IS ON FIRE"

Querido TV Show on air in a few minutes! * Querido Mudei a Casa dentro de momentos!

Do not miss the conclusion of the special episode of the show on air in a few minutes. . Don't miss the photos, this week here on the blog! 

Had to share some photos taken during makeover recordings,on July this year.

***

Não percam a conclusão do episódio especial da casa da Rute daqui a pouco no 

Querido Mudei a Casa, na SicMulher. E estejam atentos ao post das fotos, 

esta semana aqui no blogue!

Deixo-vos com algumas fotos tiradas durante as gravações do programa, 

em Julho de este ano.

Até Amanhã

Ana Antunes

(Thank you for sharing my passion for beautiful homes)

UPDATE: The Residence at River House

As it turns out, those wily property gossips at Business Insider got their lucky mittens on designer Tony Ingrao's proposed floor plan for the 62,000 square foot Residence at River House, listed this week with an attention grabbing $130 million price tag. We'll let the children pour over the details and parse the merits of the excessively super-sized apartment but here are a few tidbits to whet your floor plan porn whistle...

At more than 41 feet long, the (partly) double-height grand entry measures more than 1,000 square feet with elliptical staircase and an elevator for traversing the townhouse-type apartment's five floors. We noted the his and her powder poopers—hers has two terlit stalls and his has a stand up urinal—as well as a guest coat closet that's an astounding 17 feet long. There are large vestibule entries to both the cavernous living room and the equally capacious library which both have 20-foot ceilings and river views.

In addition to a full spa with make-up and massage rooms—not to mention separate steam room and sauna that are each as big as a large bedroom—the 27,500 square foot two-level leisure complex includes a second full kitchen and a fitness area that's more than 100-feet long and outfitted with a convenient half bathroom and a wet bar that's perfect for a boozy, mid-work out pick-me-up. There's also a two-lane bowling alley, a 45-foot long wine cellar, a 900-square foot billiard room, and an indoor tennis court with viewing benches and a wet bar. That's right, butter beans, an indoor tennis court. It would be, as far as Your Mama knows, the only private indoor tennis court in all of Manhattan. Mister Ingrao's plan calls for a leisure complex mezzanine level with a  a screening room and game room (with yet another wet bar) but does not, it seems, include a bathroom.

The top floor river-view master suite, about 4,000 square feet all by itself, has a separate sitting room and bed chamber that are divided by pocket doors and combined stretch more almost 62 feet. In addition to dual bathrooms that are each significantly larger than an unusually spacious Manhattan studio apartment, both the his and the her boutique-sized dressing rooms have separate walk-in closets for out of season clothing storage. Her closet also has a separate, walk-in shoe closet. Three hotel suite-style guest/family bedrooms that share a (windowless) lounge each have private compartmentalized bathrooms and walk-in closets.

The 6,000+ square foot back-of-house staff quarters are spread across two floors. On the upper staff level we spotted three dedicated staff bedrooms, each with private bathroom and walk-in closet plus a 65-foot long staff lounge with kitchen. A second, completely windowless staff lounge on the lower staff level (behind the master and guest bedrooms) has a second kitchen(ette) plus a massive laundry area with walk-in linen storage rooms, a bulk storage pantry and a built-in ironing table.

floor plans: Brown Harris Stevens via Business Insider

Ta-Duh! The Residence at River House!

If there's one thing Your Mama has learned from our half dozen years in the property gossip trenches it's that no matter what the condition of the economy—globally, locally, up, down, depressed or otherwise in flux—there's always going to be rich people and some of them are going to be so extraordinarily financially well endowed they can comfortably acquire a exceptionally expensive trophy property such New York City's newly listed The Residence at River House,

What is this The Residence at River House, you ask? Well, children, buckle your safety belts because, if you haven't already heard, it's a real damn real estate doozy.

The RRH.—let's just call it that for short, shall we?—eats up 62,000 square feet over five floors of the venerable and still preposterously snooty if no longer terribly fashionable River House complex that hovers over the filthy, traffic-choked F.D.R. Drive and over looks the ship-trafficked East River. The urban mega-mansion was hoisted on the open market this week amid much hullabaloo and flabbergast with a publicity seeking and publicity ensuring $130,000,000 price tag.

Once upon a time, River House was the very pinnacle of real estate snobbery in upper class New York City. So the scuttlebutt goes, in 1980 the famously persnickety co-op board allegedly rejected Gloria Vanderbilt's bid to buy into the high-nosed building because she was presumed to be having—ahem—relations with her "frequent escort" Bobby Short who is—oh, dear—a black man. Nowadays River House feels stuffy and musty in terms of its desirability to the globe-trotting super rich of today's world and, just between us chickens, the building is a couple too many blocks east of Midtown to be considered convenient to anything but itself.

The department store-sized spread, which occupies what was formerly River House's private social and athletic club, is offered "in its existing condition," as per marketing materials. That means the $130 million price is for raw space that will, we should all be assured, take years and another ten or twenty million to transform in to a properly fitted and luxuriously outfitted private residence of truly Brobdingnagian proportions.

To wit: the Casa Grande at Hearst Castle in San Simeon (CA) rings up at 60,645 square feet which means The Residence is almost 2,000 square feet bigger. Have you seen Hearst Castle? Your Mama has. We've been there, many times. Case Grande is epically gigantic. And RRH, children, is larger, and it's on the edge of Midtown Manhattan. It's real estate insanity, really.

The proposed build out of RRH by much-published, super-luxe specialist designer Tony Ingrao are described in marketing materials as a 30-ish room spread with eight bedrooms, ten bathrooms, and cavernous public rooms with 20-foot ceilings. Twenty! The river-view living room alone looks in renderings to be as big as a hotel ballroom. Mister Ingrao envisions an equally commodious double-height library and a super-sized kitchen complex, one presumably planned to best facilitate the gastronomic creations of a well-compensated private chef and a minimum wage scullery maid.

Mister Ingrao's plan calls for a 15,000 square foot bedroom wing that includes a 62-foot long master bedroom and another 6,000 square feet of staff accommodations. Did you get that? Six thousand square feet of space just to house the staff. If six though square feet for staff sounds excessive keep in mind that it's virtually impossible for pampered housewife with part-time staff to maintain a home of this proportion. Fer chrissakes, imagine how long it takes to Swiff a 62,000 square foot house. For-evuh, that's how long. And you think Madame of the 62,000 square foot apartment is gonna Swiff that shit three days a week when she has better things to do like have a private fitting with Karl Damn Lagerfeld or fly private to Houston to pick up a particularly hard to come by Birkin bag? Pleeze. A lady like this has people, usually a slew of people at her beck and command. This can't even get dressed without paying three people an arm and a leg to tell her what to wear and how to accessorize it nor can she get in or out of a chauffeur driven car without a body guard and an PDA-laden assistant that's stuck to her like a barnacle.

And don't even get Your Mama started on this lady's husband because y'all should not need little old us to tell you that this lady's man, a man with the resources to fork over $130,00,000 for a 62,000 square foot apartment that he can also afford to build out and maintain is not about to scrub his own damn toilet or—let's be honest—make himself a peanut butter sandwich. People, this man could hire a man to wipe his backside if he wanted and—trust, children—that degradation as a symbol of ultimate wealth and power is coming. Mark Your Mama's word on that, butter beans, because it's coming. Anyways, the point we're trying to make is that a 62,000 square foot house, even one used on a part-time basis, requires an extensive, full-time retinue of personnel. Iffin we had to guess, we'd say at least half a dozen not counting a 'round the clock Mossad-trained security team.

Since RRH has five thousand square feet more than an entire football field, including the end zones, Mister Ingrao managed to squeeze in a 27,500 garden-level leisure facility comprised of a river-view natatorium with a 62-foot long pool, an indoor tennis court, an IMAX-outfitted screening room, a wine cellar, a two-lane bowling alley, a gaming room, and a full spa with hot and cold plunge pools. That means—Your Mama imagines—a state-of-the-art mani-pedi station with a Vietnamese gal on call 24/7 and a private, aromatherapy-equipped room where Sven, the hunky masseuse who both Missus and Mister 62,000 Square Foot House keep on retainer, can do what he does best, if you know what we mean.

Listing details state that floor plans are available upon request. We'd request them but we sorta know already that the high-powered real estate agents who hold the listing for RRH would sooner lick a cat's ass then email the plans to naughty-naughty Yours Truly. However, iffin any of the children get their hands on a copy and might fancy a covert pass along, we'd puke with gratitude.

listing photos: Brown Harris Stevens

Some Weekend Hook Ups

Last year someone broke in to Zoe Saldana's home in L.A.'s Los Feliz area. This week the secretly married Avatar actress listed the four bedroom and four bathroom property for $1,199,000. (Trulia Luxe Living)

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Race car Jimmie Johnson may be a favorite of NASCAR's mostly suburban and rural acolytes but the 38-year old speed demon and his wife, former model Chandra Janway, favor a sophisticated urban life in New York City where they recently sold a thoroughly modern three bedroom apartment on the sixth floor of the Robert A.M. Stern-designed Superior Ink building in the West Village for $10.5 million and purchased a larger five bedroom one on a much higher floor for $14,250,000. (New York Post)

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The long-time Toluca Lake (CA) compound of the late Showbiz legend Bob Hope and his wife, Dolores, was listed this week with an astronomical-for-the-locale $27,500,000 asking price. The 5.16 acre spread has a nearly 15,000 square foot main mansion done over in the 1950s by John Elgin Woolf, a guest house with two bedrooms and two bathrooms, two bedroom and one bathroom staff quarters, separate offices, and both an indoor and an outdoor swimming pool. The catch? The four-parcel property can not be subdivided for at least five years and Miley Cyrus's family home is just over the back fence. (Curbed)

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Speaking of that Disney-darling turned pop culture sassy-pants Miley Cyrus...According to a profile in Rolling Stone, the tongue-wagging twerker has moved back in to her family home and sent her parents to live around the corner. She goes on to dish about how her neighbor, comedian Steve Carrell, is always throwin' her "'the stank-eye'" because she drives too fast in the affluent and buttoned-down residential 'hood. (Rolling Stone via Curbed)

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Rockabilly musician Brian Setzer has a kitchy-glam 3,100 square foot condo in downtown Minneapolis's Warehouse District that's filled with Grammys, gold records, pinball machines, and upsetting wall treatments. Oh, and he'd like to unload for $1,299,000. (Realtor.com Blog via Curbed)

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Earlier this year Your Mama spilled the real estate beans about Million Dollar Listing bad boy Josh Flagg paying Tinseltown scion David Katzenberg $1.6 million for his 1935 Spanish bungalow starter house just above L.A.'s bustling Sunset Strip. New reports reveal quirky Mister Flagg has quietly unloaded his two bedroom and two bathroom 17th-floor condo-crib at the I.M. Pei-designed Century Towers complex in Century City for $1.3 million to an unidentified buyer. Mister Flagg told the lady property gossip at the L.A. Times that he hauled in another $525,000 on the transaction as the new owner purchased all the furnishings. (L.A. Times)

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In May (2013) suspended professional bat swinger and ball catcher Alex "A-Rod" Rodriguez sold a custom-constructed 21,700 square foot behemoth in Miami Beach for $30 millions to a beer distribution tycoon and his German beauty queen wife and now comes word down the real estate gossip grapevine that the slugger's decided to dramatically down size to a 1,725 square foot beach front condo condo at the Zen-inspired Mei complex that he picked up for $2.1 million. (Gossip Extra)

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Poor Kanye West. He and his baby momma Kim Kardashian are spending millions to customize that $9 million mac-mansion on the outskirts of L.A.'s high-toned Bel Air 'hood they bought earlier this year but the wee lamb has had to once again cut the asking price of his contemporary, art filled bachelor pad in the Hollywood Hills. (Redfin Blog)

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And finally, in other Kardashian real estate news—whether you want it or not, Kimmy K's older sister Kourtney and her fancy wrist watch wearing baby daddy, Whatshisface, were spotted peeping a multi-million dollar estate in horsey Hidden Hills, CA, the same guard-gated and star-saturated enclave in the western suburbs of L.A.'s San Fernando Valley where Big Momma-Manager Kris Jenner and her husband, Bruce, live.  (TMZ)

Adam Carolla Snags Suburban (Family) Man Cave

BUYER: Adam Carolla
LOCATION: La Cañada-Flintridge, CA
PRICE: $2,965,000
SIZE: 3,992 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Your Mama first heard word that man-centric (and occasionally offensive) comedian, radio personality and actor Adam Carolla had acquired a new house in the same suburban Los Angeles community as rom-com actor Vince Vaughn from Benny Birdie who, he said, heard it straight from the horses mouth on his eponymous and tremendously popular podcast The Adam Carolla Show.*

Before his podcast super-success Mister Carolla previously co-hosted the call-in radio program Loveline with media savvy doctor Drew Pinsky, co-hosted with Jimmy Kimmel the televised man-fest gab show The Man Show, and he co-created Crank Yankers, a silly show on which puppets crank called unsuspecting innocents in an effort to create great and spontaneous hilarity. Last year (2012) Mister Carolla popped up on Dancing With The Stars—he was axed after he unwisely incorporated a unicycle in to a Paso Doble routine, and last year he was the fourth famous contestant "fired" from the fifth season of Celebrity Apprentice. A multi-pronged professional, Mister Carolla has also wrote or co-wrote a number of humorous, social commentary tomes including a couple—Not Taco Bell Material (2012) and In Fifty Years We'll All Be Chicks...And Other Complaints from an Angry Middle-Aged White Guy (2010)—that made it to The New York Times Best Seller list.

Naturally, being the curious monkey we are, Your Mama peeped a passel of property record data bases and made a couple of discreet queries with a couple of well-connected colleagues. It was good ol' Lucy Spillerguts who first chimed in with the confirmation that Mister Carolla and his wife, Lynette Paradise, had indeed spent $2,965,000 on a 1920s hacienda-style casa on a leafy street in the decidedly prosperous but low key La Cañada-Flintridge community that's nestled into the mouth of a rugged canyon about 15 miles north of downtown Los Angeles between the Verdugo Mountains and the Angeles National Forest in the San Gabriel Mountains.**

Digital marketing materials Your Mama discovered on the interweb show the mid-block, single-story residence sits on .56 gated and landscaped acres and has five bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms in 3,992 square feet of interior space that's already has a soup-to-nuts renovation that blends original, 1920s Spanish-style architectural details with all the modern comforts and conveniences expected in a three million dollar house in an affluent suburban community.

A long, gated driveway passes under a double-wide porte cochere and continues on to the rear of the flat parcel where it makes a hard right and morphs into a parking pad/basketball court in front of the mini-estate's 727 square foot, detached three-car garage.

There's a generously deep front porch and a slightly squeezy foyer that links to the formal living and dining rooms. The former has lustrous medium brown wood floors, vernacular-appropriate (and art-friendly) white stucco walls, a central fireplace, and a magnificent exposed beam ceiling with hand stenciled details and clerestory windows that bathe the room in softened sunlight. The chatoyant wood floors continue in to the adjoining dining room that has thin but still rugged wood beams across the ceiling and three walls lined with floor-to-ceiling French doors that look out on the green, tree-shaded front lawn. Both rooms, as per listing information, retain original hardware and lighting that Your Mama assumes has all been restored and re-wired.

The eat-in kitchen, essentially a double-wide galley-style situation, has more wood beams on the ceiling, a couple of sky lights, high-grade stainless steel appliances, and distressed wood cabinetry that looks to Your Mama as if it was hand-waxed after all the painted was roughly scraped off. It's a look, for sure, just not one Your Mama cares for. We do, however, dig the sea foam green back splash tile that's repeated in a larger scale on the window-equipped bedroom-sized laundry room.

The medium brown wood floors switch to terra cotta tiles in the family room that's lucky enough to have a vaulted wood ceiling with clerestory windows but otherwise seems to suffer from a dearth of windows. Listing photographs from the time of the sale show a smaller den with leather club chairs and fuzzy pillows has more windows but Your Mama wonders if that room is actually one of the five bedrooms. Bueller? Bueller? Anyone? Bueller?

A built-in storage bench runs under a long row of windows that overlook the private, tree-ringed backyard and flood the master bedroom with natural light. The exposed wood ceilings are vaulted and transom-topped French doors connect to a deep, tiled veranda that also overlooks the backyard. Whomever was responsible for the remodel of the master bathroom really went for it with black and white tile floors, intricately patterned Spanish-style tile accent stripes, and a double vanity crafted from a carved wood cabinet that looks almost Indonesian. The zebra-stripe rug that the home's sellers laid in front of the sarcophagus-shaped soaking tub is totally overkill, but who are we to judge, right? Anyways...

The deep and wide rear veranda steps down to an generous expanse of flat lawn that eventually runs up against and wraps around a low, fastidiously clipped hedge that encircles a large terrace with salt water swimming pool, elevated spa, and built-in bar area with barbecue and booze fridge.

Since 2003 Mister and Missus Carolla have lived in a 5,500 square foot Spanish-style house on a private, gated knoll in the Hollywood Hills. They paid $1.6 million for the property and spent another two years and who knows how much money to restore and renovate. The decision to vacate hill top home that has a view of Lake Hollywood may (or may not) have had something to do with the five bathroom house having only two bedrooms. Or could it be they decamped to a more family-friendly house in La Cañada-Flintridge because they have school age fraternal twins and the school system in the wealthy suburb consistently ranks among the top five or 10 in California? Or maybe Mister Carolla, a former contractor, just wanted a new home design project? After all, according to a 2010 house tour article in/on The Wall Street Journal, Mister Carolla has "self-described effeminate hobbies: interior design and 1920s architecture?" (Huh. And here we thought 1920s architecture was a more gender neutral thing. Call Your Mama schooled by Mister Man Cave.)

Whatever the reason(s), does this mean Mister and Missus Carolla plan to sell their former home in the Hollywood Hills, the one where car collecting Mister Carolla has a hydraulic platform that lifts one of his vintage sports cars—say an orange 1970 Lamborghini Miura—from the eight-car garage up in to his canyon view office where there are four flat-screen televisions hung from the ceiling? (Wonder how much that contraption cost?)

Mister and Missus Carolla also own a walled, gated and modestly sized ranch-style residence (with detached guest house) on Point Dume in Malibu that they purchased, according to Your Mama's research, in April 2007 for $3,600,000. Some of their nearest neighbors are Howie Mandel and Emilio Estevez, both of whom have their gated mini-compounds on the market.

*The Adam Carolla Show currently holds the Guinness World Record for the most downloaded podcast. It was downloaded nearly sixty million times from March 2009 to March 2011.

**Mister and Missus Carolla's new next door neighbors are none other than Mister Vaughn and his wife, Kyla, and their two young children. Celebrity real estate watchers will recall that Mister and Missus Vaughn paid $3,925,000 for their classic, center hall Colonial in La Cañada-Flintridge just this last April (2013). 

listing photos: Coldwell Banker

Tiles To Dye For * Mosaicos De Caír Pro Lado

Dear Bloggers, precious followers, and all of you who read me, today is one of those days when I just want to 'eat crackers and cry softly' it's a Portuguese expression! ... And it's not because of the weather, because really we are blessed with a spectacular 6 months of summer, and then winter and rainy days come to make us appreciate what we have, for half of the year!

But as I was saying ... it's not because of the weather ... is because I have to plan two more new bathrooms, one in my house and another in the new premises of the new store and I find that nothing I madly like beyond Carrara marble. And that one already lives in our new office (I'll share pictures when it's ready). Now I want something a bit different. And here is when the thing goes into crying and crackers because I just want things that I can not find or do not exist in Portugal!

If glimpse something like these little wonders below please send me emails, letter, faxes, smoke signals or whatever it takes! Very grateful!

*** 

Queridas e estimadas Bloggers, seguidoras amigas, e todos os que me lêem pois hoje é daqueles dias em que só me apetece comer bolachas e chorar baixinho!... E não é por causa do tempo, porque pronto, já somos abençoados com um Verão espectacular, e depois lá vem o Inverno e os dias de chuva, precisamente para darmos valor ao clima que temos durante metade do ano! 

Mas como eu dizía... não é por causa do tempo... é porque tenho de fazer mais duas casas de banho novas, uma em minha casa e mais uma nas novas instalações da loja e nada encontro que goste perdidamente para além do Carrara, que já vive na casa de banho do escritório. (partilho fotos muito em breve pois ainda faltam detalhes) Agora até queria algo um pouco diferente. E é aqui que a coisa dá em choro e bolachas porque só quero coisas que não encontro ou que não existem em Portugal!!

Se vislumbrarem algo como estas pequenas maravilhas de perder a cabeça em mosaicos de casa de banho, por favor, mandem-me mensagens, mails, cartas, faxes, sinais de fumo ou o que for preciso! Muito agradecida!

Até Amanhã

Ana Antunes

(Thank you for sharing my passion for beautiful homes)