LOCATION: Calabasas, CA
PRICE: $1,879,000
SIZE: 4,618 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 5.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: After a series driving mishaps that include—but are not limited to—one DUI arrest, a couple of moving violations and two hit-and-runs plus a mountain of unpaid parking tickets that resulted in the revocation of her driver's license, the apple-cheeked and newly raven-haired former child star Amanda Bynes (What I Like About You, She's the Man, The Amanda Show, All That), who declared her retirement from the Show Business via Twitter in June 2010 at the age of 24, decamped for the taxi-cab strewn streets of Manhattan where she says she'll pursue a career as a fashion designer.
Your Mama doesn't have even the remotest of notions where Miss Bynes beds down in The Big Apple but three separate and all very reliable informants snitched to Your Mama this week that young (and amok) Miss Bynes still owns a quintessentially suburban mock-Med mini-mansion in an affluent gated enclave in Calabasas, CA that she quietly scooped up last November (2011) for $1,879,000.
Almost two million bucks might seem to like a whole lotta dough for a 26-year old Showbiz retiree to spend on a large house in suburban Los Angeles in which she no longer plans to live. Believe it or not, butter beans, for a number of years in the mid-Aughts Miss Bynes was one of Tinseltown's top teen-aged earners and in early 2007—then just past her teen years at 20—Forbes declared her the fifth highest under-21 earner in Hollywood with an estimated 2006 take of around $2,500,000.
Listing information from the time of her purchase that Your Mama easily conjured up out of the interweb shows the "(mostly) one story)" stone and stucco tract house was built in 2005 with 4 bedrooms and 5.5 bathrooms in 4,618 square feet of indisputably luxurious if almost entirely brown and beige interior space.
The expensively upgraded and customized interior spaces include an airy living/dining room with wood-burning fireplace, high beamed and bead-boarded ceiling, Travertine tile floors laid in a Versailles pattern, and a trio of transomed, 10-paned French doors that open to the compact, resort-style backyard.
The fancy Travertine flooring treatment continues into the large and expensively equipped—if very ordinary—center island kitchen with distressed wood beams on the ceiling, dark chocolate-stained wood cabinetry, an on-demand hot water system, the expected collection of high-grade stainless steel appliances, pale beige-colored granite counter tops and beige tile back splash.
One end of the kitchen open to a breakfast room with French doors that access the walled and gated entry courtyard and the other end opens to a family room with more distressed wood beams on the ceiling, a second fireplace, a built-in entertainment center and direct access to the backyard entertainment areas.
The main floor master suite has heavy-duty crown moldings at the ceiling, more Versailles pattern Travertine tile on the floor and private access to the backyard and swimming pool. The suite is—or at least was at the time of Miss Byne's acquisition—complete with a double-sized closet and a private pooper with dual sinks, separate make-up vanity, lots of mocha-colored cabinetry for lotions and potions storage, a jetted bath tub and a separate steam-equipped shower.
We don't know to what use Miss Bynes put the second floor loft space but the previous, non-celebrity owners filled it with all manner of exercise equipment.
The .37 acre grounds—a good portion of which is lost to a steep, landscaped hillside behind the house—include walled and gated courtyard with splish-splashy fountain at the front of the house and several flagstone terraces at the back that are connected by stepping stone paths. An elevated stone terrace just off the family room has a built-in barbecue station and tented cabana that overlooks the free-form swimming pool that's nestled into the hillside with what listing information calls a "beach entry."
Now children, use yer noggins here. The listing photos show the house as the previous owners had it decorated. We don't care for for the day-core—it's far too wannabe English country house meets Shabby Sheek meets Pier One—but it's absolutely no indication that young Miss Bynes decorative tastes run towards chintz-covered couches and/or white-washed and faux-distressed buffets and armoires.
If the downright filthy condition in which she keeps the interior of her late-model 5-series BMW is any indication, Your Mama would bet both our long-boded bitches, Linda and Beverly, that the inside of Miss Byne's Calabasas crib looks like a post-party frat house with mis-matched, cigarette-burned couches, sheets thumb-tacked over the windows, bongs in the bathrooms and a plastic, 50-gallon garbage can in the kitchen over-filled with beer bottles and fast food containers. Ouch! Did we say that out loud? We tease, children. It's probably immaculate.
listing photos: Prudential California Realty (via Redfin)
