Wednesday, June 17, 2009

A Model House on the Market in Bev Hills

SELLER: Estella Warren
LOCATION: Cielo Drive, Beverly Hills, CA
PRICE: $1,950,000
SIZE: 2,247 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 2.75 bathrooms
DESCRIPTION: Secluded Regency style contemporary tucked away on a cul de sac. 3 bedrooms, 2.75 baths plus office/maids. Dark wood floors, French doors, updated kitchen and baths, sun drenched pool and wrap around garden.

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: One day not too long ago Your Mama was yakking with gal pal Glinda the Good Witch who let it slip that celebrated synchronized swimmer turned scantily clad cat walker turned wannabe ack-tress Estella Warren is selling her Beverly Hills hideaway.

Well children, having been three sheets to the wind at the time Your Mama forgot all about it until last night when we were sipping on a pre-bedtime gin and tonic through a straw, perusing the newest Los Angeles listings and trying to settle our frayed and frazzled nerves from the psychically destabilizing experience of watching the dee-voonly trashy dramatics on the season finale of The Real Housewives of New Jersey. Oh lawhd have mercy children, the astoundingly bad behavior of those plastic-bubbied beehawtchas manage to make ALL the other Housewives look downright dignified. And that, lambs, ain't easy to do.

Anyhoo, as she always is, Glinda was correct and large lipped Estella Warren (Planet of the Apes, Pucked and small spots on a slew of tee-vee shows) has indeed listed her her house high in the hills above Beverly with an asking price of $1,950,000.

Property records reveal that Miss Warren forked over $1,780,000 for the 2,247 square foot residence on Cielo Drive which is, of course, the very same street where the infamous Manson murders occurred. The blood soaked Polanski/Tate house has since been razed and replaced with Villa Bella, a gigantic faux-Flemish/quasi Mediterranean style mansion owned by Jeff Franklin who, among other boob-toob endeavors, made a mountain of moo-lah producing and writing the sitcom Full House. But we digress...

Miss Warren's single story "Regency style" residence sits at the tail end of a winding private drive, was built in 1959 and according to listing information includes three bedrooms plus a staff room which we'd bet our long bodied bitches Linda and Beverly is smaller than our damn walk-in closet. Listing information also indicates there are two and three-quarter poopers. Although we've gone over this about 14 million and two times before, Your Mama will once again school the children who do not already know that a three-quarter bathroom is one with a sink, terlit and stall shower...no bathtub.

Before y'all start tearing up Miss Warren's sense of decorative style, please note that his house has been staged for selling so it's quite unlikely that Miss Warren's house looked like this Pottery Barn catalog before Staging Ladee got her hands on it. The first clue that tipped Your Mama off that this house is staged to within an inch of its life is the white paint....white paint everywhere there can be paint. The second clue is all that snow white upholstered furniture with dark wood accents which we see in 80 or 90 percent of all the staged homes in LaLa Land. And the third clue, of course, is that stoopid lap blanket on the back of the sofa in the living room. Your Mama's decorating rule number 31 clearly states that real people do not, nor should they ever, sling a damn lap blanket over the back of sofa like that. Seriously, resist that urge.

The wood floors throughout the house have been stained a nice chocolate color and the open plan living area includes a step down living room with a bank of paned sliding doors that open to the rear terrace. It appears to Your mama that Staging Ladee intended for the dining area to be doing double duty as an office. Oh hell no. Unless you are so important that you can not be away from your damn email to take in a meal with your friends or family, you should keep the computers out of the dining room. The staff room or one of the secondary bedrooms would be a much better location for that contraption.

Listing information indicates the kitchen has been "updated" and if you call adding a brick red tile back splash, a few stainless steel appliances and a grey stain treatment to the cabinets updated, it is. We appreciate that some kitchen designer thought to add a work island to the small kitchen but it's a rather wacky location right up next to the paned sliding door and is visually awkward at best.

The Master suite includes a large bedroom with a wonky and ill-placed diamond shaped window and a paned slider that leads to the garden. The master bath appears to have been all did up with a new party sized shower with black glass tiles and one of those impractical and too-trendy rain shower heads. While no one loves a party sized shower more than Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter, we're a little disappointed that the glass enclosure does not reach the ceiling which means this is, unfortunately, not a steam shower.

The outdoor areas include some secluded gardens and a brick patio surrounds the swimming pool where Staging Ladee has used an batallian of white-cushioned chaise lounges that makes the back yard feel like a Marriott Hotel in Phoenix, Arizona. The hillside property looks out at the scrubby hillside on the other side of Benedict Canyon and towards the treeline that surround the smashing house sold by Red Hot Chile Pepper Anthony Kiedis sold in April of 2007 to producer/screenwriter Akiva Goldsman who won an Oscar for A Beautiful Mind and subsequently wrote the Pope provoking film The Da Vinci Code and its sequel Angels & Demons.

Your Mama has not a clue why Miss Warren has chosen to sell her house in this lackluster real estate market but maybe, just maybe, she's making a mint as Belle in an upcoming film version of Beauty and the Beast and will be moving up to bigger and better digs. We shall see.

23 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good to hear Staging Lady is still getting work since we haven't heard from her in a while. No mention of the Pink Prius....Did it get repo'd or was the lease up?

Anonymous said...

I'm not feeling the gray stained kitchen or ugly shower, but both could be remedied without too much trouble.

If the lot size is decent (sorry mama - if you listed it I'm not seeing it), this place looks like a bargain.

Anonymous said...

Have to give Mama credit. She may doze all night in her lounging clothes through a gin and tonic haze, but she always seems to be up and at 'em in the morning!

StPaulSnowman said...

Nice touch trying to unify the house and pool by painting the house trim almost the color of the pool. We do that in my area by painting all the trim blazing white.

angeleyes said...

Hmm.. I've never heard of a "Regency style contemporary" before. Something about the connotations the words 'regency' and 'contemporary' evoke for me dosen't inspire alot of confidence in the pairing of the two. This home does little to dispel that notion. As for the "updating" it received, it has Designed To Sell on a $2000 budget written all over it, but whatever the kitchen in particular looked like previously, it had to look better than it does now. Having said all that, I can see the 'design' in both the staging and it's just slightly under $2MM asking price. It IS designed to sell rather than linger on the market, and just might.

Anonymous said...

I don't get why they chose those nickel in ceiling lights - were they cheaper than plain white ones? They are distructing. Also, the house needs a bit more color; I don't think white walls suit it well. Kitchtn cabinets need to be repainted in a more pleasing and less pretentious color. Otherwise, this is the kind of house I would like to buy... when the price gets under $1M.

jbeebs said...

Ohh, I like it very much! It should sell quickly. I have one question-where is the damn stove in her kitchen?

Anonymous said...

The stove is to the far left in the shot of the kitchen, just below the microwave.

Anonymous said...

Actually, the stove is on the kitchen island, but the picture makes it impossible to see, because of the drab grey countertops and cabinets.

Anonymous said...

The stove is behind the island bar, that's why it is not visible. Those three weird white thingies are tops of barstools.

Anonymous said...

Mamma,I don't know what kind of gin that is in your tonic,but keep sippin girl cause you are on your game of late.I thought the Miss Barry Manilow article was FAB ...I fell off my sofa laughing at your runaway babysitter story,but now I find you are "Housewife" addicted as am I...I love it...I am actually kind of scared of these NJ "ladies".

Anonymous said...

I had to miss the finale of the Real Trashy Househos of Joysee but caught just enough on the youtube to hear Miss Wonky Eyed Teresa screeeeeching and trying to throw tables at a housewarming party that was oddly held at a restaurant.

I can only imagine what our Mama must think of Miss Teresa's dream house...

Anonymous said...

With some fairly minor modifications, seems like it would be a nice place. I'd lose the brick, but that's just personal taste. Is this priced low to get some over-asking bids? (I don't know the market in that area well.)

Anonymous said...

The house is located on Cielo Drive, and that triggered a gory memory of the Manson murder crew.

Sure enough, a very pregnant Sharon Tate was murdered on that street, along with several other very innocent people who just happened to be there that tragic night.

Anonymous said...

uh, did you read the post? mama mentioned the manson murders.

this house is very ordinary and it's a little depressing that it's listed at nearly two million bucks.

i'm not knocking the house, just saying there something amiss when a very ordinary (and not even that well located) a house costs this much.

shut up av. joe.

StPaulSnowman said...

Leave Average Joe alone...........he is in Tehran counting ballots in the recount. Someone in the Super Secret Brotherhood there saw his economic statistics posts on Mama's site and thought it would be a good idea to have him involved.

Ruta Wakening said...

SPS - How did you get that information out of him?? I saw his pushing his shopping cart down Melrose at an alarming speed, head down, muttering under his breath. Head down and muttering is his normal state. Moving faster than Britney can count to 10 is not normal. I called out from the cafe as he sped by but he didn't even look up. Poor Joe..It can't have been easy growing up poor. You know the Kenny character on South Park is modeled after him?

Anonymous said...

^Don't click on "finance master's" profile. It will try to install malware on your computer.

Anonymous said...

She is selling because she can't pay her bills. She hasn't had a hit in 10 years. Her ex-fiance (James Cameron's brother) drained her bank account and she had to take a bad sci fi movies to keep the house out of foreclosure. She had an affair with some no-name Australian actor on Beauty and the Beast who is married and now they are living together. Let's hope she sells soon, she obviously needs some cash. It's all quite sad actually...

Anonymous said...

slideshow of the house here:

http://www.10216cielo.com/mls/

shame the back yard/pool is so massively overlooked because I like the the general vibe of the property.

artoferic said...

thanks for the slideshow, 6:03! The inside is far too white and blah for me. It needs a whole lot of fabulous art - Motherwells, Rothkos, etc, and more interesting furniture. I would love a shower that size, but mama nailed it when she noted that it is NOT a steam shower, and the colour is a little off-putting. I also don't like that the terlit is right underneath a large ground floor window...uncomfortable feeling! The backyard, however, is another story..warm and lovely with a tasteful pool and landscaping. I love this blog, mama!

Anonymous said...

do they sell paint with color in CA?

Anonymous said...

Supposedly, the house is near the former Tate/Polanski house. Writer Joseph Stefano also lived in this house for quite some time. I like the white walls, but that's just a personal preference. Nice place, but overly decorated. I hope she has luck selling it. The history of Cielo may have some bearing on the time it languishes on the market even though it has been 40 years since the Tate incident.