BUYER: Kaley CuocoLOCATION: Sherman Oaks, CA
PRICE: $2,400,000
SIZE: 5,233 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: The other day Your Mama received a munificent missive from a gal we'll call Patty Putsittogether regarding the recent real estate doings of a twenty-something year old actress named Kaley Cuoco. As it happened, Patty P. follows Miss Cuoco on the Twitter and somehow managed to match photos Miss Cuoco tweeted (or twatted or whatever) with online listing information for a newly sold faux-Tuscan style mansion in Sherman Oaks, CA. It was, to be honest, a rather genius job of celebrity real estate sleuthing. Anyhoo, after receiving the 411 from Patty P. we quickly got on our beat up but still bedazzled Princess phone and gave our beloved Deep Throat source Lucy Spillerguts a ringy-dingy. Miss Spillerguts, who seems to pull information right out of thin air, seconded the motion that the house Patty P. thought was purchased by Miss Cuoco was indeed purchased by the young actress.
Miss Cuoco started up her ladder of fame and fortune when she was just an itty-bitty girl from Camarillo, CA, a town perhaps best known among southern Californians for its big ol' outlet mall. Her big break came in 2000 when she portrayed Marsha Brady in the misguided and unnecessary 2000 tee-vee movie Growing Up Brady. Since then Miss Cuoco has been a bizzy beaver appearing in a long list of movies ain't nobody but 12 people heard of including Don't Forget Your Toothbrush, Debating Robert Lee and Cougar Club. She is, however, best known for her role as a dumb-bell teenager on 8 Simple Rules and for her current gig as a Cheesecake Factory waitress/wannabe actress on the surprise hit The Big Bang Theory where she earns a reported $200,000 per episode, a paycheck that will eventually rise to an astonishing bank account filling $350,000 per episode.
Miss Cuoco carried on a clandestine romance for two years with her Big Bang Theory co-star Johnny Galecki but the blond hottie has since moved on to greener boyfriend pastures. She now gets down with a dude named Christopher French who fronts the Los Angeles indie rock band Annie Automatic and who like Prince, Madonna, Ke$ha and Beyoncé before him goes professionally by a single moniker, French.
Prior to moving to this house in Sherman Oaks Miss Cuoco owned another home in Sherman Oaks that prop records and previous reports show she bought in August of 2005 for $1,355,000. She was at the time just 20 years old, not even old enough to legally partake of boozy libations and able to afford a million-plus dollar house. Just two years later Miss Cuoco was struck by a mild case of The Real Estate Fickle and shoved her Sherman Oaks starter house on the market in October of 2007 for $1,285,000, a number that Your Mama's bejeweled abacus show would result a financial loss of at least $70,000 not including the fat real estate fees. Her case of The Real Estate Fickle quickly escalated and she took the house off the market just a month later. Property records indicate that the 2,171 square foot Spanish style casa remains in Miss Cuoco's property portfolio.
According to records Your Mama dug up on the interweb, Miss Cuoco forked over $2,400,000 for her new house in November of 2010, which means lucky Miss Cuoco, now 25 and able to get liquored up legally, has the financial good fortune that she needed not to sell her starter house in Sherman Oaks in order to afford a bigger and (arguably) better house in Sherman Oaks.
High walls, thick foliage and a drive gate obscure any view of the house from the street so any of you moe-rons with the damn fool notion that it might be a hoot to hop in your Hyundai and head on over to Sherman Oaks to have a look-see at Miss Cuoco's new house stand duly warned that there isn't anything to see but bunch of plants and iffin you want to see a bunch of damn plants you should visit to your local nursery. Okaaaay?
Listing information for the property shows the house was built in 2004, measures 5,233 square feet and includes 5 bedrooms and 5 poopers. Listing photos show the most distinctive architectural characteristic of Miss Cuoco's new digs are the many stacked stone archways, walls and other accents that appear profusely on both the exterior and interior of the house.
Behind the sliding electronic gate, an vast apron of concrete covers every inch of ground between the gate and house and substitutes for a more traditional front yard of lawn and rose bushes (or whatever). Obviously this was done in order to allow access to the side-facing three car garage but the end result is ugly and industrial. However, it is certainly drought tolerant–an important thing in dry dry dry southern California–and will have the benefit of saving Miss Cuoco on landscaping and water bills. Not that she needs to save on the water bill, mind you. Beehawtcha brings home a reported $200,000 per episode. The previously mentioned stacked stone motif presents itself vociferously here in the motor court where the exterior of the garage and the visible fireplace stack are swaddled in the stuff. Your Mama would bet our long bodied bitches Linda and Beverly that that is not actual stacked stone held in place by mortar but rather a more economical sort of veneer that merely mimics stacked stone.
Before we go inside Your Mama must warn and remind the children that the day-core seen in the listing photographs is not that of Miss Cuoco but rather the previous owner or–more likely due to the number of potted orchids placed throughout–Staging Lady in a Pink Toyota.
A puny portico tucked up into the corner near the garage marks the entrance where iron and glass doors open into an impress-the-guests style entry with beige marble floors (or maybe it's travertine?) and an enormous pill-shaped opening. A wide but shallow arch leads to the formal living room with fireplace that in turn gives way through a smaller arch into the formal dining room. At the tail end of the entrance hall, directly opposite the front door, a stacked stone archway leads into an over-sized kitchen/family room complex. The gore-may kitchen has all the high-grade stainless steel appliances we've come to expect in multi-million dollar mock Mediterraneans and faux Tuscan mansions that lines the streets in the more expensive zip codes of the San Fernando Valley. A huge, granite-topped island provides plenty of prep space and a snack bar and the adjacent breakfast room looks out towards the back yard. The family room area, divided, natch, from the kitchen by a stacked stone wall with an arched hole cut out of it, has a–you got it–fireplace fashioned from stacked stone.
Listing information indicates that one of the five bedrooms is located on the ground floor and would make a perfect guest or nanny suite. The other four bedrooms, each with en suite facilities, are situated on the second floor. The master suite, also on the second floor and punished with wall-to-wall beige carpeting but blessed with a tree-top view, includes a sitting area with (stacked stone) corner fireplace, walk-in closet and large private balcony with stacked stone balusters and tree-top view. The generous master pooper includes two sinks, a separate make-up vanity, frameless glass-enclosed steam shower and free-standing soaking tub set in front of a firebox cut into a yet another wall of stacked stone.
While this is the sort of house that makes Your Mama's architectural hair stand on end–and not in a good way–it's well planned for casual indoor-outdoor living. The kitchen and family room at the extreme rear of the house open through a series of wood-framed sliding doors to a large courtyard-like dining terrace. A sheltered outdoor living room–with stacked stone corner pillars, of course–has a view of the swimming pool and white floor to ceiling curtains that can be pulled for privacy.
A wide, curving set of steps descends gracefully to a patch of grass where, we presume, all Miss Cuoco's pooches will do their bizness. At the far end of the long backyard a tall and thick ficus hedge rings a swimming pool and attached spa that are surrounded by a flagstone terrace.
While Sherman Oaks is hardly glamorous, the South of Ventura Boulevard neighborhoods are decidedly upscale and home to a large number of celebrities. Miss Cuoco's new crib, for example, sits sugar-borrowing distance from Pink. Other nearby neighbors with recognizable names include Wayne Brady (host of Let's Make a Deal), Michael Chiklis (The Shield, No Ordinary Family) and Debby Boone (who sang the song You Light Up My Life that Sister Woman used to sing herself to sleep with every damn night during the 1970s). Also nearby is the corner lot where iconic actor James Dean lived in a little log cabin style house he leased for $250 per month. That log cabin house has since been replaced with a far less interesting and architecturally bland residence.
listing photos: Partners Trust
