Billy Blanks Lists Hidden Hills House

SELLER: Billy Blanks
LOCATION: Walker Road, Hidden Hills, CA
PRICE: $11,500,000
SIZE: 16,478 square feet, 7 bedrooms, 12 bathrooms
DESCRIPTION: ...Spectacular, one of a kind custom, over 16,000 sq. ft. of the finest quality. Includes an indoor basketball court, stellar home theater, game room, study, piano room, spectacular master with retreat, luxurious bath, and view balcony with private staircase to pool, spa and grotto below. Large cabana with outdoor kitchen, adjoining waterfalls and lush private landscaping. Big, nearly 2-acre lot, offers room for horses below the main pad...

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: According to multiple reports, Tae-bo titan and sometime ack-tor Billy Blanks is headed for the court of dee-vorce with his soon to be ex-wifey of 30-some years. As is so often the case when marrieds go splitsville, the fantastically fit couple's huge Hidden Hills house has put on the market with an asking price of $11,500,000.

Property records indicate that Mister and Missus Blanks spent $1,400,254 to purchase an almost two acre lot on Walker Road in the guard gated Hidden Hills community in July of 1999. The once happily married couple then spent boo-coo Tae-bo bucks building their 16,478 square foot dream house which records show was completed sometime in 2001.

Listing information for the sprawling quasi-Mediterranean style mansion shows that there are seven bedrooms and a dozen bathrooms. Twelve! While we always appreciate when each bedroom has a private pooper, we imagine this off kilter bed to bath ratio annoys the crap out of the cleaning crew responsible for keeping all 12 of them terlits sparkling clean.

In addition to the impress the guests style entrance hall that looks a little like a cruise ship lobby and certainly succeeds in hammering home the point that Mister and Missus Blanks have a lot more money than most people, there is a voluminous double height formal living room and a formal dining room that seats at least 12 and features more of that swagged Scarlett O'Hara style drapery which seems to be so popular with rich people. The colossal kitchen includes two large work islands, coffered ceilings, all kinds of carved cabinetry and a dee-voon double-wide Viking range, which is probably the only thing we actually like in there.

The master bedroom features a large sleeping chamber with a shallow barrel vaulted ceiling, a fireplace, a mess of custom cabinetry, a private balcony perfect for a post-coital puff, and a vaguely Roman style bathroom bathed in beige marble, beige tile, beige balloon curtains and beige paint. Although it's far from the most significant issue we have with the day-core, we simply can't move past those gigantic flower arrangements that look to Your Mama like the sorts of things you might see in a damn funeral home. How much do the children want to bet all those behemoth boo-kays are dust collecting silk situations?

Other rooms and amenities include a study, a piano room, a game room where someone has fearlessly laid down burgundy colored carpet–which could be great if you're a sloppy red wine drinker, but other wise not so much, an impressive looking (but not to our personal taste) home thee-ayter with stadium style seating, and an indoor basketball court for the five or six days a year it rains in Hidden Hills. Could this be where Mister Blanks held the family's Tae-bo torture sessions?

The grounds strive to be resort-like and feature a big barbecue center with not one, but two fancy barbecues, a lagoon style swimming pool, spa and, natch, a grotto because if you're going all the way, you might as well go right over the top. Beyond the landscaped backyard is a sloping section of the lot where listing information indicates the homeowner could house some horses, a not uncommon feature in equine friendly Hidden Hills.

Listing information also reveals that there is garaging for six automobiles, a two bedroom guest suite with a private entrance, stone floors, volume ceilings and custom window treatments. But please children, do not even get Your Mama started on the custom window treatments.

Listen puppies, people are free to live however they want and in whatever manner their pocketbooks will afford. And we're sure this humongous house will appeal to any number of big bizness types, filthy rich families and high-powered horse lovers. But here's the problem that Your Mama has with these over-sized, over-amenitied and over-processed mcmansions: They look to us like they are trying way too hard to be elegant and classy and instead of actually looking classy and elegant, they look just the opposite. They may be located in a preferred zip code, have lots of elaborate moldings, hand-forged ironwork, extensive tile work and expensive electronic bells and whistles, but somehow, they still come off looking, well, cheap. Sorry to all the deep pocketed peeps who like these custom built mcmansions, but that's our humble and utterly meaningless opinion.

The horsey Hidden Hills community which lies in the northwestern suburbs of Los Angeles is home to all sorts of rich and famous types including (but not limited to) Denise Richards who is still trying to unload her 5,651 square foot house, lesbian power mommies Melissa Etheridge and Tammy Lynn Michaels, Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne, Beau Bridges, Lisa Marie Presley, Bruce Jenner and all those krazy Kardashian gurls, and Nicolette Sheridan who recently forked over $4,320,000 to purchase Miz Etheridge's previous home. Mister Big Time recently reported that big and tall Emmy winning actor Brad Garrett finally sold his 10,223 square foot sprawler that was last listed at $8,350,000 (reduced from $9,495,000)