SELLER: Allison Janney
LOCATION: Studio City, Calif.
PRICE: $1.495 million
SIZE: 1,925 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms
YOUR MAMA’S NOTES: Allison Janney has packed up her half-dozen Emmys and put her unassuming but hardly inexpensive (former) home in the hills above Studio City, Calif., up for sale with an asking price of $1.495 million.
Property records show Miz Janney purchased the property in May 2001 — during her long and deservedly lauded stint on “The West Wing” — for $799,000, and current listing details, which make no secret that the home is owned by a showbiz luminary, show the single-story residence presides over a double lot that totals 0.56 acres and measures in at a modest-by-Tinseltown-standards 1,925 square feet with three bedrooms and two bathrooms.
A high hedge and mature trees largely obscure the low-slung rancher from the street, so, if she was so inclined, Miz Janney could probably could have sat on her front porch without any passers-by being remotely aware they were in the presence of a multi-Emmy winner. A minuscule entry vestibule — better a broom closet-sized foyer than no foyer at all as far as this property gossip is concerned — leads directly into the living room, where there are medium brown hardwood floors, a humbly mantled fireplace next to a bit of built-ins, and a pair of 16-pane sash windows that generously extend almost to the floor and stop just short of the ceiling. The wood floors continue into the adjacent and unexpectedly oversized dining room that has multiple sets of glass sliders that open to the outdoor entertainment and recreation areas.
The renovated kitchen, completely open to the dining room, has sand-colored quartz countertops on snow-white Shaker-style cabinets and a full suite of stainless steel appliances. Listing photos show a pill-shaped pot rack hangs over the small center work island, and anybody who knows a damn thing about Your Mama’s sometimes peculiar decorative peccadilloes knows that pot racks — otherwise known as a head-clanking grease and dust catchers — cause our blood to get up to the point we need a big fat nerve pill. But anyways, a bonus room off the nearby laundry room has a built-in desk, a pint-sized beverage fridge and two walls lined with floor-to-ceiling storage cabinets and wardrobes.
Two perfectly ordinary and fully carpeted guest/family bedrooms share an equally humdrum hall bathroom, while the fairly compact and also carpeted master suite has a shallow vaulted ceiling, French doors to the yard, a wood-floored bathroom with claw-footed soaking tub, and a row of closets with outdated louvered doors in which Miz Janney installed built-ins to hold a television and bedside reading material instead of clothing. (Maybe that’s where all the wardrobes in the office come in?)
Flagstone pavers set into a flat and well-watered lawn link the house to the solar-heated swimming pool, spa and soaring, vine-draped structure that dramatically shades a dining terrace and lounge with what appears to be an outdoor fireplace surmounted by a flatscreen television. A series of stone paths and railroad-tie steps meanders up the hillside behind the house to a good-sized deck with built-in bench seating and canyon view. Even farther up the hill, a roomy, tree-shaded red-brick terrace has a thatch-roofed tiki bar. Not that it matters an iota, since we’re not in the market for a $1.5 million house in Studio City, but, as whimsically charming as a hillside tiki bar may be, hauling our boozy booty halfway up a goddamn mountain for a cocktail sounds unnecessarily strenuous. And, frankly, we are absolutely certain that some of our lazier and less couth friends would cop a squat behind a tree before they’d embark on the arduous trek down to the house, so maybe not the most practical feature for this property gossip.
Last October Miz Janney, a showbiz veteran who shakes her moneymaker as a lovably acerbic recovering alcoholic on the sitcom “Mom” and has a handful of other impressive projects in the hopper, quietly upgraded her residential circumstances with the $3.25 million acquisition of a fully remodeled residence that’s also in the rugged and increasingly pricey mountains above Studio City and has, per listing details from the time of the transaction, four bedrooms and three bathrooms in about 4,500 square feet.
Listing photos: Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices
