Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Your Mama Hears...

...through the Tinseltown celebrity real estate gossip grapevine that reality television denizen Kim Kardashian has packed up her industrial-sized booty and moved into a leased mansion located just down the road and around the corner from a number of other trouble-making tabloid superstars like Paris Hilton, Charlie Sheen and Robbie Williams.

Hardcore celebrity real estate mavens and reality television aficionados may recall Little Kimmy Kardashian followed up the $885,000 sale of her 3 bedroom Los Angeles, CA kondo krib in January 2010 with the February 2010 purchase of a nearly 4,000 square foot faux-Tuscan villa high up above Beverly Hills, CA. The 5 bedroom and 4.5 bathroom mansion, gated, heavily secured and set very close to the street on a cul-de-sac that runs up a narrow ravine just below Mulholland Drive, cost K.K., according to property records, $3,400,000.

In late January of this year, in the turbulent wake of poor K.K.'s quickie marriage and divorce from some hunky Midwestern fella whose name we can no longer recall, an unhinged fan—let's call him Mister Delusional—showed up at front gate of K.K.'s Bev Hills home with luggage in tow. Mister Delusional claimed he'd flown into town all the way from North Carolina to work on the one of K.K.'s reality programs that include the long-running and exceedingly lucrative Keeping Up With the Kardashians and Kourtney and Kim Take New York , a program we've never seen but are absolutely sure is nothing less than scintillating and truly meaningful. Clearly Mister Delusional was, well, delusional and K.K.'s team of quick-thinking security guards snatched the wannabe intruder up and rang the po-po who, natch, escorted from moe-ron from the premises and—we imagine but don't actually know—served the nimrod with a well-deserved restraining order.

It wasn't long after that ugly incident all the gossip glossies and celebrity-based blogs reported K.K. was so freaked out by the whole thing that she wanted to move from her current residence in Bev Hills to a nearby guard-gated community that would provide her with an extra layer of security in addition to her body guard(s).

Well, dontcha know butter beans, according to an often in the know source (and the peeps The Daily Mail who beat us to the punch), that's just what K.K. did. The entertainment industry global superstar and entrepreneur—who does not, as far as Your Mama can tell, sing, dance, act or have any other showbiz-y talent besides near-shameless self promotion—(allegedly) leased a 6,775, square foot mock-Med meets Asian-infused Craftsman-style mansion in the celebrity-filled and guard-gated Mulholland Estates community. Some of the other high profile residents/homeowners in the 'hood include Vanna White, Judith Light, and rock 'n rollerSlash who pushed his 11,000 square foot Mediterranean manse on the market as a pocket listing in mid-2011 with a $9.5 million price tag, since cut to $9.1 million.

Although it's absolutely a luxury development where the tree-lined streets are lined with multi-million dollar (mc)mansions, some of the children will surely see Mulholland Estates as a somewhat curious choice for someone concerned about their security since the community has over the years been a bit of a hotbed of crime: Paris Hilton's high-glam house was burgled by the infamous Bling Ring in 2008 and in 2010 some guy showed up on her doorstep with a knife; Besides all the illegal activities that surely took place inside his house Charlie Sheen has had not just one but two Mercedes Benz stolen right out from his damn driveway and run off a cliff in to a nearby ravine.


Anyhoo, listing information for the house in question Your Mama managed to tease up out of the interweb shows the 4 bedroom and 6 bathroom mansion K.K. (allegedly/reportedly may have) leased in the Mulholland Estates community was built in 2003 and last on the open market as a fully-furnished rental with a hefty hefty hefty $40,000 per month price tag. We can't say for sure if K.K. rented this house but our research did turn up evidence the nearly half acre, Balinese resort-inspired spread, owned by a brainy businesswoman/philanthropist/heiress to a billion dollar-plus biomedical fortune, was also available for purchase an asking price of $10,950,000.

Interior spaces (shown above) include an intimately-scaled foyer that bursts dramatically into a double-height entrance hall with celeb-style curved staircase and stunning Lagos Azul limestone flooring that continues into the formal living room. The cocktail-party friendly living room, divided into two section by a pair of columns, has a fireplace, several sets of Craftsman-style glass doors that open to lushly landscaped gardens, and a grand piano just in case K.K. wants to tinkle the ivories.

Another pair of columns stand between the entrance hall and formal dining room where there's more blue limestone underfoot, another fireplace and over-sized windows with backyard and swimming pool view. The limestone carries on in the chef-friendly, eat-in kitchen complete with sizable center island, snack counter, a full complement of high-grade stainless steel appliances, and custom Shaker-style mahogany cabinetry topped by bull-nosed granite counter tops.

The floor material switches to wide-plank wood in an adjacent family room spacious enough to accommodate a pool table and a seating area oriented towards a paneled wall with fireplace surrounded by five—that's right 5—flat screen televisions, one big one in the middle with two smaller ones stacked on either side. Wide, Craftsman-style glass doors on two walls open the room (with its mostly beige, black and burnt orange day-core) to foliage ringed patios and terraces.

If the lavish-living K.K. really did rent this residence she no doubt fell head over Jimmy Choos for the sprawling master suite privately situated at the back of the house where it takes advantage of canyon and city views through huge windows and glass doors. A chunky and very contemporary three-sided concrete-faced fireplace separates a private sitting room (with Juliet balcony) from the bedroom area where there's a small, built-in shelving and entertainment center tucked into the corner next to the fireplace with wall-mounted flat screen tee-vee for watching Jimmy Kimmel, Chelsea Handler, Saturday Night Live and/or more lusty and lurid fare.

The over-sized attached master bathroom has stone flooring (that we can only hope has radiant heat), two sinks and vanities, a concrete-lined and glass-enclosed steam shower with long concrete bench, and an oval-shaped stone soaking tub set into an elevated deck in front of a full wall of floor-to-ceiling windows. A pair of custom-fitted, boutique style walk in closet/dressing rooms surely appealed to a clotheshorse like K.K. who does not, it seems to Your Mama from what we see in all the tabs and gossip glossies, leave the house for any reason whatsoever without the laborious and expensive efforts of a wardrobe stylist, hair doer and make-up gal. All the image effort seems positively reedonkulous to Your Mama who can't be bothered to put on a proper pair of shoes most days, but we get it. When yer a reality tee-vee lightening rod of controversy like K.K. is you always always always gotta look on point for the public who will gleefully shred a publicity seeking beehawtch for showing up at at the CVS in Calabasas or proto-suburban Sherman Oaks looking the least bit janky.

The lower level of the house opens out to a variety of patios and entertainment areas that include a curtained and vine-draped pergola lounge area that flows out to a second lounge area under the stars. At the other end of house a dining area nestled into a crook of the house has built-in bench seating, and a Palapa-shaded outdoor kitchen/barbecue center has bar seating. A sensuously curved sunbathing terrace snacks along the rim of a black-bottomed swimming pool and wood bridge spans a narrow arm of the pool to an elevated terrace with sunken spa set into a ring of palm trees from where night time hot tubbers can see down the house-dotted canyon and across the sparkly carpet of lights of the pancake-flat San Fernando Valley.

As it turns out, way back in early February after it was reported K.K. might want to move house, the leggy lady at Trulia suggested K.K. might want to consider this very house.

For the record, Your Mama has no direct knowledge of K.K. looking at or moving in to this house and, it should be noted, she recently tweeted the following:

So funny I was reading some magazine that showed pics of my new home...home is nice, but never seen it before! LOL who makes this stuff up?

Make of that what you will.

aerial photo (at top): Pacific Coast News
listing photos: Coldwell Banker / Beverly Hills South

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