Sunday, April 29, 2007

Brad Garrett's Hidden Hills Hideaway

SELLER: Brad and Jill Garrett
LOCATION: Jim Bridger Road, Hidden Hills, CA
PRICE: $9,250,000
SIZE: 10,223 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 8.5 bathrooms
DESCRIPTION: Gorgeous French country estate! Beautifully finished w/ plank hardwood stone floors, leaded galss windows, volumn ceilings, granite hand painted tiles, true slate roof. Rare downstairs master suite, state-of-the-art theatre, magnificent study, gym/bonus room, wine cellar guest house, 6-car garage, cov. patio, BBQ center, huge grassy yard. Wow!

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Today Ms. Ruth Ryon at the LA Times tells us in her Hot Properties column that funny and tall actor Brad Garrett has put his humongous Hidden Hills house on the market for a whopping $9,250,000. Y'all are most likely to remember the lunky funny man from his turn as the big brother opposite Ray Romano on Everyone Loves Raymond. where he won three well deserved Emmy's. More recently you've likely seen Garrett acting his big heart out on a show called Til Death... with Joely Fisher, who Your Mama finds to be very funny. But long before Mister Garrett was a household name making big money on syndication residuals, did y'all know that Mister Garrett was the first winner of the $100,000 prize for comedy on Star Search in 1983? Well, he was.

What is it with this Hidden Hills place? This tiny enclave crawls with celebs like Matt LeBlanc, who's selling his monster Mediterranean, Denise Richards, who is selling her shabby chic house amid not so nice rumors, her ex-bestie Heather Locklear lives up in this area, as do one of the world's favorite lezbeean couples Melissa Etheridge and her baby maker wife Tammy Lynn Michaels. Who knew actors were such a suburban group of people.

Anyhoo, like most of the mansions up in the suburban wilds of Hidden Hills, Mister Garret's French Country house sits behind guarded gates which certainly helps to keep all the looky-loos from driving by. The Garrett couple purchased the 1.2 acre vacant lot in February of 2004 for a staggering $6,384,000. That's the vacant land price children.

The couple proceeded to custom build a 6 bedroom, 8.5 bath, 10,223 square foot house with high ceilings that would comfortably fit the Mister's 6'8" frame. The house has a grand foyer with a curving staircase, a huge kitchen with two islands and high end appliances, and and plenty of room for the Suburbans, Range Rovers and minivans in the 6-car garage. According to the listing and Ms. Ryon, the house also includes everything anyone would ever need living out in the boondocks including a state-of-the-art theatre, gym, wine cellar, and a BBQ center, whatever that is, a play room and a play house for the kiddies, and a 1 bedroom guest house for visitors who stay too long.

Obviously these sprawling homes out in Hidden Hills are highly desirable and it seems rich folks line up to pay upwards of $10,000,000 for a big house that requires a full time maid to keep dusted and a team of landscapers to be clipping, mowing and pruning several times a week.

But these houses in the outlying reaches of Los Angeles are not for Your Mama. We appreciate the no holds barred construction and finishes such as the slate roof on this house, which we guarantee cost the Garretts a staggering amount of money. We appreciate the house pride that has these Hidden Hills denizens spending fortunes landscaping front yards no one will ever use. We love the high ceilings and the real wood floors as opposed to the silly composite and laminate that looks like wood that people use nowadays. And we have no doubt this is a well built house that will withstand the test of time...and it should for 10,000,000 smackers.

But, with all due respekt to Mister Garrett, who Your Mama thinks is incredibly funny and talented, we just find this sort of suburban opulence disconcerting , bo-ring, and if we're being honest, a little depressing. These big houses with their beige carpeting, beige tiles, and beige walls look like middle class tract houses in Des Moines that have been injected with steroids and seriously need a good gay decorator to get up in there and make something special out of what's essentially a big beige box.

Don't get Your Mama wrong. We have no illusion about the attractiveness of these big beige houses to the bulk of the wealthy people. Rich people, particularly those with offspring, LOVE houses like this. They are just not our cup of tea.

The Garretts, who are reported to be dee-vorcing, previously lived in the Mister's hometown of Woodland Hills where they lived in a 4 bedroom, 5 bathroom, 5,873 square foot house they bought in 1998 for $1,625,000 and sold in May of 2005 for $2,300,000. In August of 2004, the couple also sold an 8,000+ square foot house in Lake Arrowhead for $1,850,000.

No word on where the tall man is going, but we imagine it'll be someplace suburban with very high ceilings.

Sources: LA Times, Internet Movie Data Base

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