SELLERS: Kelly Clarkson and Brandon Blackstock
LOCATION: Hendersonville, TN
PRICE: $8,750,000
SIZE: 20,121 square feet, 7 bedrooms, 8 full and 3 half bathrooms
YOUR MAMA’S NOTES: Crossover pop-country singer/songwriter Kelly Clarkson hoisted her comfortable yet glamorously appointed and conspicuously spacious riverfront mansion in Hendersonville, TN, up for sale at $8.75 million. Listing details make no secret of the identity of the home’s famous owner and show the three-story, light brown brick mansion that overlooks the snaking Cumberland River about 20 miles outside downtown Nashville measures in at 20,121 square feet with seven bedrooms and 8 full and 3 half bathrooms. The winner of the first season of “American Idol,” who has gone on to win oodles of industry accolades including three Grammys and a dozen Billboard Music Awards, and her husband Brandon Blackstock, talent manager step-son of country music queen Reba McEntire, purchased the 4.06-acre waterfront spread in October 2012 for $2.86 million.
Tremendous iron gates at the tail end of a discreet wooded cul-de-sac swing open to a long drive that cuts across a lush carpet of tree-dotted lawn to a circular motor court with central fountain. A stately columned portico leads to a double-height foyer with beige marble floors and a sweeping, wood and wrought iron accented double staircase. Flanked by a study/library with fireplace and a baronial formal dining room with two Toyota-sized crystal chandeliers, the foyer opens at its back-end to a capacious, 650-plus-square-foot double-height great room with chatoyant wide-plank wood floors, fireplace with elegant stone mantelpiece and three sets of transom-topped French doors. Numerous taxidermy animals on the walls include a couple of deer heads and an entire bear standing on a boulder ominously mounted up near the ceiling.
Family quarters include a cook-friendly kitchen with two of just about every appliance as well as two large center islands, one with a poured concrete counter top and the other, which incorporates a raised snack bar, with a stainless steel counter top. The kitchen opens to a window-lined breakfast nook and family room where a pair of boxy, caramel colored leather sofas face off in front of a TV-surmounted stone fireplace. There are five en suite guest bedrooms on the upper level plus a sixth in the basement while the wall-to-wall carpeted master bedroom is located on the main floor and offers another TV-surmounted fireplace, a room-wide bay window, and a bathroom plenty commodious enough to float a two-person soaking tub smack right in the middle of the room. A sprawling, basement level entertainment complex includes a stone-walled games room with a fully stocked bar that features saddles instead of more traditional bar stools. There’s also a wood-paneled home theater and a children’s playroom/bunk room with built-in bunk beds.
Curving twin staircases link a large terrace outside the great room, family room and master suite on the main floor to a dark-bottom swimming pool and spa set into a broad stone terrace with panoramic through-the-trees river view. Off to one side of the pool an open-air structure allows for shaded dining and a separate, dome-roofed pavilion houses a second, indoor spa. The estate’s landscaped grounds additionally provide extensive flowering gardens, a sand volleyball court, and a broad lawn that slopes gently down to the lake’s edge where there is a private, deep-water dock.
Miz Clarkson, who wrote and published the children’s book “River Rose and the Magical Lullaby” last year, previously owned several contiguous rural properties about 15 miles southeast of downtown Fort Worth, TX, that were sold off in the fall of 2012 as well as a stone cottage in Nashville’s affluent Belle Meade neighborhood that she bought in 2007 for $1.49 million and sold in 2011, at a considerable loss, for $1.2 million. The Clarkson-Blackstocks are reported to be relocating to a custom-built mansion on a bucolic 275-acre farm outside Nashville that property records indicate they acquired in the spring of 2014 for $1.96 million.
Listing photos: Parks Realty
