LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $2,499,000
SIZE: 2,890 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Late last summer, after an almost two year courtship, supermodel slender and highly photogenic actress Kate Bosworth married also slender if not quite as photogenic indie filmmaker Michael Polish in a Martha Stewart Weddings-approved ceremony on a scenic Montana mountaintop.
It wasn't long before the newlyweds were spotted by the paps house hunting in Los Angeles's celebrity-approved Los Feliz neighborhood even and shortly after that Miz Bosworth revealed that she and her new mister—plus his daughter from a previous marriage—had moved to a lake front house in Montana.*
We do not know Miz Bosworth or Mister Polish or, as far as we know, even know anyone who knows either one of them so we really can't say how much time they spend holed up in the semi-remote, lake-front wilds of Montana or if they ever found a new place to buy in Los Feliz. (We suspect they may have.) Whatever the sitch the still newly wedded couple has not gone without a crash pad in Los Angeles. Indeed, Your Mama's research on the matter indicates that in November 2005 Miz Bosworth, via trust, paid $2.1 millions for a gated residence in L.A.'s Nichols Canyon area that—as it turns out—popped up on the open market this week with an asking price of $2,499,000.
Current online marketing materials show the two-story house—all T, no shade, hunties, it ain't no great shakes in the architecture department—was originally built in 1955 and has three bedroom and 2.5 bathrooms in a modest but hardly minuscule 2,890 square feet of thoroughly and arguably thoughtfully updated and upgraded interiors.**
A blacked out, celebrity-style gate on winding street near the top of Runyon Canyon swings open by remote control to reveal a brick-lined concrete driveway that dips down to a compact motor court/parking pad and a visually aggressive, front-facing two car garage. Wedged into the slim space between the house and the up sloping hillside, a brick courtyard surmounted by a bougainvillea climbing trellis leads back to the front entry.
Inside a small entry area leads into a J-shaped open-plan main living space that hinges around a white painted brick fireplace with modern-minded wood storage capability. Milk chocolate-toned hardwood floors run throughout the various nooks and crannies of the somewhat meandering, urban loft-style space that includes an itty-bitty "formal" seating area with vaulted ceiling in front of the aforementioned fireplace. Tucked off to the side in a nest-y nook with a lower and flat ceiling, there's a boob-toob viewing lounge where somebody managed to successfully use a butter yellow and crimson floral wall paper on the back wall. (And that's high if entirely meaningless praise from this sometimes inappropriately bitchy property gossip because snazzy-jazzy wallpaper just really isn't Your Mama's decorative thang.)
Beyond the fireplace an airy dining area was done up in such a fashion that works for easy breezy breakfasts and more dressed up dinners. A glimmery antique crystal chandelier hangs above an all-black, Chinoiserie-style dining room set with leopard print cushions. (In case anyone cares—and we can't imagine why they would—we find the chandelier a smart if perhaps a bit too petite choice for the room but we can not get enough of that deliciously high-camp dining room set. It might only be better in all the worst ways if it was done in Chinese red lacquer.)
The dining room opens on one end through windows and single pane French doors to the backyard entertainment and recreation areas and on the other end over a two-seat snack peninsula to a just about all white kitchen with two farmhouse sinks, some sort of expensive looking buff-toned counter top material, and a full suite of top-quality stainless steel appliances.
The galley style kitchen has a steeply pitched ceiling and a long greenhouse-type window that gives the otherwise fairly skinny (if well outfitted) galley kitchen some much needed head room. Everybody knowns that Rule #53 Your Mama's Big Book of Decoratin' Dos and Don'ts emphatically states that greenhouse windows in kitchens (or any other rooms) are strictly verboten as they far too often get cluttered with collections of silly things people ought not collect like, say, figurines of sleeping cats. (Believe it or not, children, there are people who actually collect sleeping cat figurines and we can't help but cynically pity the poor souls for their efforts to surround themselves with—ugh—cuteness.) However, Your Mama recognizes that there can always be an exception or two to any rule and, in this case, we utterly j'adore the greenhouse window the sucks up natural light like a vacuum on crack in what could easily be a very dark kitchen.
One of the two main floor guest/family bedrooms appears in listing photos to have been dressed and used by Miz Bosworth as a small den/office with built-in display shelves (that display an eclectic and global collection of books and other this and thats). The other, larger bedroom has two sets of multi-paned French doors, one set opens to a narrow, bamboo shaded side yard where somebody was clever enough to sneak in a lap lane swimming pool into what was surely, previously, a under-utilized sliver of the sylvan .54 acre property. The bedrooms share a travertine- (or maybe limestone-) lined hall bathroom that's big and well-equipped enough it could easily be mistaken for the master bathroom of a comfortably appointed home. Once again, some clever person punched a (single pane) glass door through the bathroom wall for lap pool access. That way, of course, the lap swimmer need not traipse soaking through the whole damn house should they need to stop for a mid-swim visit to the facility. Anways...
The upper floor is given entirely to a wood-floored and sky-lit master bedroom with a small seating area between the bed and side-lit multi-pane French doors that open to a private terrace nestled into the surrounding tree tops. There are two walk-in closets—both, we have to imagine, custom kitted to the exact specifications and sartorial storage needs of stylish Miz Bosworth—and an all-white bathroom with Carrara marble topped double vanity, white-tiled steam shower with convenient built-in seating bench, an all white tile jetted bathroom, lots of high windows, and a semi-private cubby for the crapper.
In addition to the entry courtyard and the side yard with the lap lane swimming pool a continuous series of decks and bricked terraces run along the full length of the back of the house. Single-pane French doors in the t.v. lounge open to a deck with portable kiva fireplace and a couple of canvas slung butterfly chairs ottomans. Two more sets of single-pane French doors in the "formal" living area and dining area connect to a larger, red brick terrace, ringed by a short, well-clipped hedge and shaded by very mature eucalyptus trees. The canyon views aren't the sort that some might call jet liner or panty dropping but the views over the canyons and mountains are certainly appealing, especially given that it's only about 10 minutes down the brutally twisting canyons roads to the bustling (if still somewhat tawdry) heart of Hollywood.
*Just to round out the story: Mister Polish and several of his family members have long vacationed and owned homes in Montana so, while a bit out of the way for a couple of chicly arty-farty Tinseltowners its wasn't some odd place out of the blue. Property records show Mister Polish owns a modest, lake front house (sort of) near Bigfork, MT, that he picked up in early 2009 for $555,625.
Not for looking, we didn't find any direct evidence that Mister Polish currently owns any real estate in Los Angeles. That does not mean he does not, only that we don't know. Property records do show he previously owned a home above Beachwood Canyon that he quit claimed over to his ex-wife in the late 1990s and we also turned up some mildly circumstantial evidentiary traces that suggest that at some point in the last several or so years he rented an unassumingly charming bungalow in Silver Lake owned by dynamite contemporary architect Lorcan O'Herlihy.
**One snarky criticism (among others) that we will make is that we don't care for how some of the room have more modern, single pane French doors and others have more classic and traditional multi-paned French doors.
listing photos: Michael McNamara/Shooting L.A. for Coldwell Banker
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