BUYER: Dennis QuaidLOCATION: Austin, TX
PRICE: $12,500,000 (list)
SIZE: 11,103 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 7 full and 4 half bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Last week we received a sub rosa missive from the Lonestar State's Tawny Twostepper who snitched to Your Mama that word on the real estate street in Austin, TX is that actor Dennis Quaid is in contract to purchase a swank new crib.
The cinematically prolific Mister Quaid started up his ladder of fame in the mid-1970s after his loony brother Randy earned an Oscar nomination for The Last Detail. His career hit its stride in the early 1980s and he's now appeared in more than 70 films including Great Balls of Fire! Wyatt Earp, Traffic, Far From Heaven and The Parent Trap. Along the way he married and made a baby with romantic comedy queen Meg Ryan, shoveled a lot of coke up his nose and suffered from anorexia. In 2010 he gave an Emmy, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild award nominated performance for his portrayal of horny former president Bill Clinton in The Special Relationship.
In July of 2004 the toothy movie star married his third wife, a real estate agent from Austin, TX named Kimberly Buffington. The couple fornicated, procreated and soon produced a set of twins who underwent a life-threatening medical ordeal shortly after they were born in late 2007. Six months or so later the new parents announced that they planned to pack up their little dumplings and hightail it out of Tinseltown to Missus Quaid's hometown of Austin where, in fact, Mister Quaid already owned a home.
Not long after meeting his third bride-to-be in 2003, Mister Quaid scooped up a two-parcel property with a modestly scaled residence in Austin situated on the shore of Lake Austin. Property records indicate that Mister and Third Missus Quaid sold the property in December of 2009 to a local dentist.
Of course, we really haven't any idea where exactly they've set out their toothbrushes since the sale of their home on Lake Austin in late 2009 but Your Mama assumes that the Quaid clan has been shacked up in one of their other residences in either Montana or California. Wherever they may be bunked lately it looks like they'll soon load up their covered wagon and beeline for the Great State of Texas where they can raise up their youngins out of the harsh lights of Hollywood. According to Tawny Twostepper, Mister and Third Missus Quaid are fixin' to buy a multi-level celebrity-style mansion with 100 feet of waterfront that happens to be almost directly across the lake from his previous crib.
The house Tawny says the Quaid's are about to acquire has been owned by the same Texas family for forty years. The property passed from father to son who spent, according to Tawny, a million or more to renovate his poppa's old pad in 2007. The house has not been on the open market for some time but Your Mama managed to excavate an old listing or two that depicts the decadent dwelling as having 11,103 square feet with half a dozen bedrooms and 7 full and 4 half poopers. As far as we can tell, it was last listed on the open market with an asking price of $12,000,000.
The renovation of the mullet-style house–it's all business in the front and a party at the back–maintained the traditional brick front façade with tall arched French doors on the second floor that open to a balcony with intricate wrought iron balustrade that over looks the circular motor court. The lake side of the house, an architectural party if there ever was one, looks to Your Mama like a Brutalist ziggurat modeled on the damn Tower of Babel.
A theatrical staircase with decorative wrought iron balustrade winds itself around a voluminous atrium space that soars above part of the primary living room that includes a high-drama fireplace with copper flue. At least one of the mansion's four powder poopers has a cloisonne-style sink and the walls covered entirely in the most amazing (and disconcerting) cerulean-colored crocodile skin. Your Mama has no idea how many crocodiles had to die for that wallpaper or if, in fact, it's actually far more animal friendly paper embossed with a crocodile skin pattern. Whatever it is, it's decoratively voluptuous and Your Mama recommends anyone looking to replicate this courageous and outrageous look should sit down and think about it over a pitcher of gin & tonics. Consideration of wall covering like that is not something to be taken lightly.
Anyhoodles poodles, the quirky decorative revelations continue right on in to the tee-vee nook area of the living room where one wall has a giant boob-toob mounted to it and another entire wall is lined completely with lighted cabinets filled to the gills with guns. This highly-custom über masculine feature makes Your Mama's hair stand straight up on end but it certainly makes sense given that the seller of the property is a bit of a big game hunter.
A nearby formal dining room takes a decidedly feminine decorative turn with a florid chandelier and a hand-painted table surrounded by chairs upholstered in a pink silk brocade. It looks to Your Mama like someone requested the kitchen be fitted to look like a cliché version of a library. The gourmet space has lattice patterned green marble floors, green marble counter tops and oodles of custom cabinets either made from or made to look like they're made of mahogany. We suspect they are indeed made from mahogany. Either way this unusual mash up is rather unsettling to Your Mama and we're not sure it's wise to stylistically cross-breed a kitchen and a library.
Listing information also states and indicates via photographs, that the house includes a wine tasting room, a dark and windowless game room lined with video games and decorated with sports memorabilia and a secured vault, because y'all know how those Texas ladees like to turn it out for all those high-toned social events and charity functions loaded down with big jewels.
A bridge in the backyard spans a public street–that's right, celery sticks, it spans a public street–and connects the mansion to its myriad of millionaires-only waterfront amenities that include a boat house, dock, boat house, waterside swimming pool and spa, terraced gardens, rock waterfall, outdoor living room with fireplace and, believe it or not, an FAA approved helipad.
According to the records we peeped at, Mister and Third Missus Quaid continue to own a 2-acre equestrian estate tucked into the Mandeville Canyon area of Brentwood in Los Angeles, CA. Property records we accessed indicate that Mister Quaid paid $5,350,000 for a 2-ish acre equestrian estate in June of 1999. The Los Angeles County Tax Man shows the main manse at the Mandeville Canyon property measures 5,619 square feet with 6 bedrooms and 7 poopers.
However, an late 2008 article in Architectural Digest states that the couple actually live in a 15-room French farmhouse style residence that was not purchased until after the couple were married. Armed with the information Your Mama went hunting and pecking through the property records and determined that in October of 2005 Mister and Third Missus Quaid purchased two adjacent parcels a bit farther west in the Rustic Canyon area of Pacific Palisades. Combined the properties measure 1.96 acres and according to the Los Angeles County Tax Man includes a 7,837 square foot residence with 8 bedrooms and 9 poopers.
Since the mid 1970s Mister Quaid's property portfolio has included a ranch near Yellowstone National Park in the Paradise Valley area near rugged and rural Pray, MT. In the fall 2003 Mister Quaid let Architectural Digest behind his closed Montana doors for a photo shoot and in July of 2007 Mister Quaid married Third Missus Quaid on a hilltop on the property. In late 2008 the couple purchased a sizable chunk of adjacent property bringing the size of their spread to more than 500 acres, some of which was formerly owned by Oscar-nominated screenwriter Sam Peckinpah (The Wild Bunch). The property includes miles of bridle trails, a private observatory and a 3-mile stretch of creek that snakes through the pristine property.
The Paradise Valley area of Montana has long attracted Tinseltown types with a Big Sky bent including Jeff Bridges, Peter Fonda, Robert Redford, Harrison Ford and Michael Keaton who all own or owned ranches in the area.
listing photos: Buckman & Company via Real Estate Space
