BUYER: Jack Osbourne
LOCATION: Studio City, Calif.
PRICE: $3,200,000
SIZE: 5,614 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 6.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMA’S NOTES: In late May, rock ‘n’ roll scion and budding television and documentary producer Jack Osbourne sold his refurbished 1920s Spanish-style abode in L.A.’s celeb-saturated Los Feliz area for $3.2 million and, we first heard from gossip juggernaut TMZ, he and his missus, Lisa Stelly and their toddler daughter hightailed it to the San Fernanado Valley where they spent — oddly enough — $3.2 million for a bigger and brand-spanking-new house in and unassuming but affluent, north of Ventura Boulevard neighborhood in Studio City.
Young Mister Osbourne’s new, clapboard-sided residence in Studio City — online marketing materials rather generously describe as a “Cape Cod” — sits somewhat tightly on a .27-acre corner lot with five bedrooms and 6.5 bathrooms in 5,614 square feet. (It’s really too small to be a right-proper mccmansion so, oxymoron-ish though it may be, we’ll call an architecturally jumbled mini-mcmansion. How’s that sound?
Not surprisingly, the side-lit front door opens directly in to the exact sort of double-height foyer that Your Mama’s entirely unscientific research shows to have become painfully ubiquitous in newly built mcmansions and mini-mcmansions throughout Los Angeles and, indeed, across the United States.
To the left, a wide archway links to a wainscoted formal living room with fireplace, an unusually large and decoratively upsetting, donut-shaped ceiling medallion. A couple of arched French doors open to a tiny terrace wedged uncomfortably between the house and the driveway. To the right of the front door a second wide arch leads to an also wainscoted formal dining room with coffered ceiling, modern multi-orbed chandelier and butler’s pantry that conveniently connects through to the cook-friendly kitchen.
A trio of interconnected rooms along the rear of the residence include a breakfast room bookended by the kitchen and the family room where listing photographs show a wall-wide built-in entertainment unit with open bookshelves and closed storage, thick moldings, a ziggurat-style ceiling treatment and a bank of French doors with direct backyard access. On the other side of the breakfast room the roomy, expensively-equipped kitchen has custom, cottage-style raised panel cabinetry (somewhat) balanced by industrial-style lighting, thick slab marble countertops and dove grey subway tile back splashes, two dishwashers and three stainless steel sinks, and a center island with two-stool snack bar.
Somewhere up in there, listing details show a library/office with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and a narrow-looking media room with wide screen projection system and (at least) half a dozen black leather recliners with built-in drink holders.
The second floor master suite offers a private backyard view balcony, a built-in desk space slammed up into the corner, a kitchenette and one of the most vexatious corner fireplaces on which Your Mama has ever had the misfortune to lay our eyeballs. Who, pray tell, thought it was a good idea to wrap the damn fireplace around to the hallway that connects the bedroom to the bathroom? Pleeze. Hopefully the Jack Osbournes will have the good sense and decorative decency to bring in family decorator Martyn Lawrence Bullard to fix that abomination. But we digress. The master suite is complete with a fitted walk in closet and a marble-slathered bathroom wide enough for a sizable sitting area smack the center of the room.
Back downstairs an L-shaped, trellis-shaded terrace just off the breakfast and family room has a dedicated dining area and a gas-fired outdoor fireplace. There’s a small patch of flat lawn that looks just big enough for a super-sized jungle gym and a built-in barbecue station with all stainless steel equipment. A petite, dark-bottomed swimming pool with inset spa is surrounded by a some sort of slate gray tile — it could alternately be stained and stamped concrete — that Your Mama can promise the children and the Osbournes will heat up like a sauna rock in the relentless and scorching summertime sunshine for which the San Fernando Valley is (in)famous.
Other high-grade features of note include: a front-facing three-car garage; ashy brown hardwood floors that run throughout the house; an impressive amount of custom mil work; front and rear staircases; an 80+ bottle, temperature-controlled walk-in wine room; a home automation system that controls climate, lights, fireplaces and entertainment equipment; and a state-of-the-art security system with 16 strategically located high-resolution surveillance cameras.
Listing photos: John Aaroe Group
