LOCATION: Nashville, TN
PRICE: $720,000
SIZE: 2710 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: We discovered from The Bizzy Boys at Celebrity Address Aerial that Lady Antebellum's bearded lead vocalist Charles Kelley recently purchased and sold homes in Nashville, TN. Let's discuss the more modest one he and the wife sold first, shall we?
Every property record we peeped shrouds ownership of the well-maintained white brick residence in question with an oddly-named trust trustee-d by powerful country music industry insider Julie Boos. No surprise there. Miz Boos' (utterly magnificent) name appears on the deeds and documents associated with property owned by any number of high-profile Nashvillians in the inter-connected music, sports and entertainment industries. The Bizzy Boys have their mysterious ways, though, assure Your Mama the house in question, located in Nashville's Cherokee Park 'hood, was sold in April (2012) for $720,000 by the pop-country superstar and his perky-looking publicist wife Cassie McConnell in April 2012 for $720,000.
Lady Antebellum, for those not dope with the new-fangled country music scene, is one of the most popular pop-country acts doing their thing today. Since 2008 when the trio stormed the scene with number one hit Love Don't Live Here, Lady Antebellum's fame and fortune elevator has only gone up with an astonishing number of hit songs and accolades that, as of today, include (but may not be limited to) 10 ACMs, 7 Grammys, 6 CMAs, 3 TCAs, 2 CMTs, and 2 AMAs plus 1 BMA and 1 ACA.
As an aside, Mister Kelley happens to be the younger brother of (less successful) singer-songwriter Josh Kelley who is married to and adopting babies left and right with Emmy-winning hospital drama denizen turned movie star Katherine Heigl. As a second, related aside, we hear from always knowledgeable real estate insider Knancy Knowsthedish the Kelley-Heigls have been out peeping pricey properties in Los Angeles that are larger than the Los Feliz residence they bought in November 2007 for $2,550,000 and spent a pretty penny more remodeling. Also, as an only sort-of-related third aside, can anyone tell Your Mama why for the last few years every time we see Miz Heigl's photo on the blogs or in the gossip glossies she's either sucking on a ciggy—she reportedly quit a couple years ago now—or shoveling food in her gaping mouth? Do they just hate her?
But we digress...
Property records show that above mentioned trust The Bizzy Boys linked to Mister Kelley and the Missus paid $685,000 to acquire the Cherokee Park place in February 2010. Various other online resources indicate the house was originally built in 1910 and spans about 2,710 square feet with 4 bedrooms and 4 bathrooms.
The Bizzy Boys, bless their hearts, kindly pointed a bleary-eyed Your Mama to the dregs of an online listing for the former Kelly-McConnell with a cache of photographs that appear to Your Mama to show the interior spaces after being worked over by Staging Lady in a Pink Toyota. Of course, we don't know a camel from a needle's eye but at least we hope that's staging because it all looks so stiff and mannered and uncomfortable. Even the kitchen looks uncomfortably buttoned up, right down to that cockamamie metal rooster perched just so on the center island.
UPDATE: This video on People.com during which Mister Kelley gives a glimpse inside (and outside) of the house would suggest the house was indeed dressed down and staged for selling.
The off-center entry, marked by an urn pediment painted olive drab, shares the same shiny wood floors and impossibly trendy dark wall covering as the formal dining room. The especially long formal living room has a bay window on one wall and a wood-burning fireplace flanked by inset book and display shelves on another. Just to the left of the front door, overlooking the side driveway, what appears to have originally been a screened porch has been glassed in. We absolutely prefer a screened porch to a glassed-in three season thingamajig but y'all say tomaytoes and we say tomahtoes, right?
Less formal, open-plan family quarters behind the dining room include a u-shaped center island kitchen with black Shaker-style cabinets, flecked tan granite counter tops, tile back splash and medium-grade stainless steel appliances. The kitchen opens over the center island snack counter to the family room outfitted with a second fireplace, tray ceiling and a long bank of wood-framed glass doors that open to a concrete and brick terrace partially shaded by a glammy black and white canopy.
The second floor master has a compact bedroom and separate sitting room with full-length interior window that allows a person at the top of the stairs to look straight into said sitting area. We're not really sure why this was a good idea, but there you have it. The attached master bath is a decent-sized but fairly ordinary affair with twin pedestal sinks, a jetted tub set into a niche tiled with some sort of tumbled stone, separate shower stall and, mercifully, a private cubicle for the crapper.
Back in the backyard, red brick raised planters thick with flowering bushes run along one side of the oddly-shaped swimming pool while the terrace extends off the back of the house and around the other side of the pool to a slightly elevated, shrubbery encircled sunbathing terrace.
In February of this year (2012), even before they sold their Cherokee Park abode, Mister Kelley and Miz McConnell splashed out on a much more significant estate in the upscale Belle Meade area of Nashville. More on that in a minute...
listing photos: Fridrich & Clark