With a second bun in the oven, Aussie actor Claire Holt, toe-headed alumna of the cult favorite TV series “The Vampire Diaries,” and its spinoff “The Originals,” and her real estate executive husband Andrew Jablon have hoisted their relaxed, light-filled California contemporary in L.A.’s central Beverly Grove neighborhood on the market with a $4.25 million price tag.
Located on a sought-after street of tidily kept homes, and easily walk-able to LACMA and The Grove, the crisply modern home was brand spanking new when it was purchased about 3.5 years ago for $3.8 million. Listings held by Tyrone McKillen at Compass point out the nifty horizontal wood cladding on the garage doors and describe the pint-sized front garden as a “zen walkway” secreted behind a high hedgerow. There are four and potentially five bedrooms and 5.5 bathrooms in about 4,200 square feet.
The Holt-Jablons brought in Marina Del Rey-based designer Suzy Kloner, who smartly softened the home’s boxy modernity with a variety of natural materials, and arranged the sprawling loft-like open-plan living space on the main floor to provide distinct uses but still flow easily into one another. When the home was featured on Architectural Digest’s website in 2018, Kloner described her and Holts’ shared goal for the interiors: “polished and clean, but with coastal vibes.”
Honey-hued wide-plank hardwood floors, warm white walls and high ceilings are complemented by a massive raised hearth fireplace and open sight lines that extend out to the gardens through wide banks of nearly floor-to-ceiling walls of glass that slide open for a seamless merge with the outdoor living areas.
A vision of high-end culinary simplicity, with pale-grey countertops and charcoal-colored cabinets, the chef-accommodating kitchen is arranged around a 15-foot-long doublewide island with integrated snack bar. Elsewhere, black-and-white palm leaf patterned wallpaper enlivens the powder room, and a main floor bedroom with private bath — the potential fifth bedroom — has been converted to a cozily sophisticated media room.
The floating steel and wood staircase climbs up through a voluminous double-height space to an oversized landing that does double duty as a home office with a built-in desk and storage cabinets. All three of the guest bedrooms are en suite, two of them with direct access to a shared balcony. Sequestered at the rear of the second floor with a fireplace and a roomy terrace that overlooks the backyard, the primary bedroom’s walls are covered in buff-colored hand-painted wall covering perfectly described in A.D. as having a “subtle watercolor-like effect.” There’s also a bedroom-sized walk-in closet and, in the sleek bathroom, a wall of floor-to-ceiling glass that folds open to serene and secluded courtyard.
Back downstairs, the .14-acre parcel doesn’t allow for a particularly large backyard. However, this one, walled for security and strategically hedged for privacy, comfortably manages to fit in lots of sun-splashed decking for sunbathing, an outdoor kitchen for alfresco dining and, its most alluring feature, a L-shaped Tiffany-blue swimming pool with a spa and Baja shelf set into the short leg and the longer leg measuring a lap-swimmable 40 feet from end to end.
The bicoastal couple has long maintained a residence in Miami Beach. And it looks like they plan to keep it that way. Right about the same time in the spring of 2019 that they sold a two-bedroom and two-bathroom 19th floor waterfront condo on Miami Beach’s Belle Isle for $1.275 million — tax records indicate it was purchased by Jablon in 2015 for $960,000 — they shelled out $3.1 million for a vacant half-acre waterfront parcel in a neighborhood where waterfront homes typically sell at well above $6 million and where, presumably, they plan to build a family-sized home.