LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $2,500,000
SIZE: 3,946 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: British singer and songwriter Leona Lewis rocketed to (European) super stardom in 2006 when she won the third season of X Factor, a wildly popular televised singing contest and the British pre-curser to American Idol.
The following year the PETA-friendly and gorgeously tawny-skinned songstress signed a five-album contract with L.A.-based music industry icon Clive Davis, reported at the time to be worth somewhere in the vicinity of $10,000,000. Like anyone else with a brains and bills would do for ten million clams, she packed her bags and crossed the pond to make a record or two in Tinseltown. The Simon Cowel protogee first settled—an informant snitched to Your Mama ages ago—into a rented house in the Laurel Canyon area of Los Angeles. In September 2009 she opted to sink some real estate roots in Los Angeles and acquired a privately but still conveniently located property in the Nichols Canyon area in September 2009 for $1,850,000.
Like many rich and/or famous folks, Miss Lewis soon caught a mild but classic case of The Celebrity Real Estate Fickle and last summer, not even two years after signing on the deed's dotted line, put her west coast abode on the open market with a substantially higher asking price of $2,500,000. The two-story residence with detached guest suite went unsold and late June (2012) it was de-listed only to be re-listed this week with a very familiar—and, well, previously ineffective—asking price of $2,500,000.
Listing information shows the architecturally questionable contempo-mock-Med main house—set high up a private, gated drive at the tail end of a private, gated street—was built in 1999 on nearly three-quarters of an acre, measures in at 3,946 square feet and contains 4 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, and 4 fireplaces. A detached structure creates a mini-compound with single car garage offers additional living space with a bedroom, bathroom and home gym set up.
The mostly monochromatic white interior spaces of the main house have a mix of buff-colored marble tile and chestnut-colored hardwood floors. Most windows, large and small, appear to be fitted with white, heavy-duty plantation shutters. The voluminous living room was anachronistically outfitted with a Chevy-sized crystal chandeliers we can get our decorative mind around and weirdly classical (dentil) moldings that we can not.
Children, this is a mock-Med contemporary structure—whatever that is—and the thick, dentil molding and ceiling medallion make the living room look like its doing bad drag, you know? Poor thing is bustled up and dripping in (fake) diamonds in the heat of a Santa Fe summer when she ought to be wearing linen palazzo pants and a big turqwahz brooch.
Anyhoo, the black, gleaming baby grand in the living room is to be expected—Miss Lewis is, after all, a pop music chanteuse who can surely sing like nobody's bizness—but we're just gonna have to pretend we do not see those gigantic, carved stone angel wings that stand on either side of the fireplace lest we hissy fit ourselves into a decorative conniption of epic proportions.
There's another fireplace and another crystal chandelier in the formal dining room otherwise dressed with little more than a few mirrored candlesticks (or whatever those are) and a half-dozen, white-washed Louis the Something-style cane-backed chairs. A sizable, center island and cook-friendly kitchen has a handy-dandy snack and booze counter and opens to a breakfast area with glittery crystal chandelier hung over a modern, white lacquer Parson's table. The adjoining family room done up in what we might (unnecessarily and cattily) describe as a dash of Marie Antoinette meets a soupçon too much Shabby Sheek.
Based on Miss Lewis's chosen day-core in the public spaces—kinda pared down and decidedly glam-romantic—we weren't even mildly startled to find a four poster bed in the spacious master bedroom hung with gauzy panels nor did it shock us even a teensy bit the roomy master bathroom—with jetted tub and separate, glass-enclosed shower—is almost entirely slathered in beige travertine or marble or whatever.
We're even less surprised—but, we confess, mortified—to find a small collection of kneeling and/or bowing angel figurines set around the swimming pool. Sorry, Charlies. Call us every awful name in the good book but Your Mama just does not think angels and/or angel-related objet are appropriate day-core unless you live in a still-consecrated house of worship.
French doors in both the breakfasting area of the kitchen and the family room open directly out to the backyard entertainment areas that include, as per listing information, a built-in barbecue. The swimming pool and spa are backed by a (probably faux-) stone waterfall and thicket of tropical landscaping. A narrow strip of grass and stone pathway (with fountain) hugs the back of the house and connects a swimming pool area to a small, flat grass pad at the far end of the house, near the motor court, two-car (attached) garage and detached guest house.
We haven't even a wee morsel of intel about whether Miss Lewis plans to keep a crib in Tinseltown but perhaps she's ready to hightail it back home where various online reports suggest Miss Lewis maintains a home base in the London borough of Hackney.
listing photos: Keller Williams / Beverly Hills