SELLER: Kelly ClarksonLOCATION: Nashville, TN
PRICE: $1,449,000
SIZE: 4,900 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 6 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Yesterday afternoon Your Mama received a covert communique from one of our Music City snitches–this one we call The Nashville House Whore–who gleefully whispered in our big ear that pop-rock singer/songwriter Kelly Clarkson recently listed her residence in Nashville, TN with an asking price of $1,449,000.
Miss Clarkson was, of course, the first contestant to win American Idol. This was way back in 2002, long before that program became the tired and wrung out tee-vee tragedy that it is today. Unlike some of the other winners of the televised singing contest–can you say Ruben Studdard and Taylor Hicks?–the pint-sized belter has gone on to great commercial success with a couple of platinum albums, world wide tours, and two Grammy Awards.
Now children, Your Mama knows about as much about Miss Clarkson and her particular brand of music as we do about quantum physics, which is to say just about nothing. What we do know right off the top of our puny head is that she's got a big, powerful and earthy voice and that she's often rumored to be a lesbian, which she says she is not. A quick spin through the interweb tells us that Miss Clarkson is fixin' to release a new album sometime in 2011 that we are certain we'll never lay ears on unless we happen to wander into a Gap store or some other mass retailer that pipes pop music into its stores.
According to property records and previous reports, Miss Clarkson picked up her Nashville nest in August of 2007 for $1,490,000. A few quick flicks of the well worn beads of Your Mama's bejeweled abacus reveals that even if Miss Clarkson's real estate people manage to snag a buyer willing to pay full $1,449,000 asking price Miss Clarkson still faces a forty thousand dollar bang to her bank account not counting renovation costs and the fat real estate fees she'll have to fork over when the house sells.
Listing information shows Miss Clarkson's pretty but ordinary looking stone faced house, located in the upscale Belle Meade area of Nashville, measures around 4,900 square feet and includes 5 bedrooms and 6 poopers. It should be noted that the Davidson County tax man's records indicate Miss Clarkson's crib has just 3 bedrooms and 3.5 poopers in 5,470 square feet. We're not sure why the discrepancy but iffin we were the betting type we'd put all our money on the figures shown on the real estate listing.
Your Mama doesn't know all of the changes Miss Clarkson made to her Nashville nest after she signed on the deed's dotted line, but we can see from cross-comparing current listing photos with listing photos from the time she purchased the property that she fiddled with the landscaping, replaced all drapery with simple white Plantation style shutters throughout most of the house, darkened the hardwood floors from a honey tone to a dark caramel color, and painted every room a different damn color. We've got wine colored walls in the formal living room, celadon in the dining room, mustard up on the walls in the kitchen, buttercup in a tee-vee watching room, saturated brick in a large room of unknown purpose on the second floor, chilly ice blue in the master bedroom, and what looks like the palest of celery in the master pooper. Listen puppies, we know that paint is an easy thing to change but right now this place looks like the damn show room of a paint store.
Anyhoo, to the right of the small entrance hall, the formal living room has brown hardwood floors and a fireplace. Beyond the living room, through a skinny doorway is the formal dining room where that ca-rayzee Staging Lady in a Pink Toyota made the inexplicable and mournful mistake of furnishing the room with nothing but a set of patio furniture and a forlorn bundle of twine tied sticks tied leaning on the wall. Bitch, pleeze. Somebody get Your Mama a nerve pill because we're about to pass out from this mystifying and inexcusable decorative deliquency. Additional rooms within Miss Clarkson's 1.5 story quasi Connecticut Cape Cod style house, according to listing information, include a den, study, office, and recreation room.
One of the more significant changes Miss Clarkson made to her country music capital crib was to upgrade of the kitchen with all new higher end stainless steel appliances, replace the back splash with tile that looks like brick or stacked slate or something like that, and stain the once honey colored cabinetry a deep shade of green with milk chocolate undertones. Listen, puppies, it's better than the bone chilling banality of its previous incarnation, however Your Mama just can't quite get comfortable with green cabinetry in the kitchen. Or maybe it's that we can't decoratively reconcile the green cabinetry with the mustard colored walls. Whatever the case, it's in dire need of a nice, gay decorator to get in there are work out the kinks.
Two of the five bedrooms–including the master suite–are situated on the main living level which is convenient for fat asses who can't be bothered to climb a single flight of stairs to to to bed. Presumably the 3 remaining bedrooms are tucked up into home's second story with its trio of peaked dormers that run along the front of the house. The bedroom sized master pooper, according to listing information, was upgraded and now has a poured concrete floor, double sinks of the dog bowl variety, and a free-standing soaking tub shaped like a damn gravy boat.
The back of the house opens to a slate terrace enclosed on three sides by the house, the 3-car garage wing and a free standing screened porch with stone floor, vaulted exposed wood ceiling and an impressive stone fireplace. A wide and long tree shaded lawn stretches out beyond the terrace and screened porch with plenty of room for a swimming pool although swimming pools don't seem to be as de rigueur in Nashville as they are in some other parts of the country where famous folks congregate such as Los Angeles and the Hamptons.
Your Mama does not know if Miss Clarkson plans on purchasing another crash pad in the Nashville area or if she's already bought another pied a terre in Nashville. However, as far as we know–which ain't much–her primary residence remains a gated, multi-parcel spread south of Fort Worth, TX in semi-rural Mansfield with a 4,794 square foot house, swimming pool and private pond that records show the original American Idol purchased in November of 2004.
