SELLER: Robin Tunney
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $1,399,000
SIZE: 1,920 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms
YOUR MAMA’S NOTES: Looks like engaged television actress Robin Tunney — her fiancée is interior designer Nicky Marmet — wants a new house as she’s put her long-time Los Angeles home up for sale for $1,399,000.
The Tinseltown vet, whose resume stretches back in to the early 1990s, was twice included on “Maxim” magazine’s “Hottest Babes” list in the early 2000s but arguably didn’t get her proverbial showbiz break until the mid-2000s when she landed a plum role on the first two season of “Prison Break” and she’s best known for her current role on “The Mentalist.”
Property records show Miz Tunney purchased the multi-level residence in May 2003 for $780,000 and listing details show the 1,920-square-foot digs, located on a puny up-sloped lot in the Franklin Hills area between Los Feliz and Silver Lake, was built in 1959 and is attributed to an unnamed USC professor and two of his students, one of whom was internationally lauded architect Frank Gehry.
It will not likely appeal to pinch-faced Platinum Triangle snobs who don’t dare pilot their well-waxed Range Rovers east of La Brea Boulevard unless absolutely necessary but Your Mama sort of digs this location because it’s a two-minute walk to Speranza, one of our all-time favorite boîtes in Los Angeles. Even still, the dirt patch under the entry stairs is an unnecessary eyesore and the stairs themselves could use a bit of zhushing up, too. We do, however, give the candy apple red garage door a standing ovation for eye jazzy chutzpah it gives the otherwise monochromatic milk chocolate-colored house.
It looks to Your Mama like it’s (at least) two glute-firming flights from the street to the also candy apple red front door of the three bedroom and two bathroom dwelling. While it increases the height of the ceiling and, hence, amps up the architectural drama, the living room is — at least for the lazy and weak kneed — somewhat annoyingly situated a half flight of stairs back down from the open-concept foyer. The dark brown wood floors of the entry switch to oatmeal colored wall-to-wall carpeting in the living room that also features: a vaulted and exposed wood ceiling; one wall completely clad in vertical wood slats; a television surmounted fireplace with black marble surround; floor-to-ceiling glass sliders that open to deck with an over-the-rooftop view toward the Griffith Observatory.
Back up in the entry the wood floors switch to charcoal colored slate tiles in the adjoining combination lounge/dining room where a full wall of floor-to-ceiling windows and glass sliders open to the backyard. The tile floors wrap around the large center island that separates the dining area from the clerestory windowed kitchen that’s big enough but looks, well, a bit bland in listing photos.
The master bedroom has a pitched and beamed exposed wood ceiling, a long wall of walnut-faced wardrobes and a spacious, emerald green tile accented bathroom with soaring ceiling, a big and boxy soaking tub and a separate, entirely glass-enclosed shower. When we say “entirely glass-enclosed” we mean entirely glass-enclosed, walls and ceiling. Two more guest/family bedrooms share a minimal minded hall bathroom with floating vanity, white-tiled shower and clerestory windows.
Although original to the house the flexible-use space on the lower level is “not part of permitted square footage,” as per listing details, but looks to have concrete floors and connects through a wide bank of floor-to-ceiling glass sliders to large deck set on top of the street-level two-car garage.
Space hogs will find the backyard is a mite picayune but it is uncommonly flat for a hillside property and efficiently incorporates a good-sized and partly covered dining terrace that gives, a big bed of decorative gravel, a lap-lane swimming pool backed by a thicket of bamboo, a separate and slightly raised spa, and an itty-bitty patch of grass.
Listing photos: John Aaroe Group
