THE SKIRTED ROUNDTABLE WITH JOE RUGGIERO

Since I got behind on writing about the Skirted Roundtable, I am trying to catch up, first last week with Jamie Drake, The King of Color – our first “live” interview, and now, this week with Joe Ruggiero, The King of All Trades!  If you are like me, you first became acquainted with the warm and very friendly Ruggiero through HGTV.   He had numerous shows that ran on the channel, but the most popular was probably Homes Across America where he presented some of the most beautiful houses that ever were seen on that channel.  Each week, with a sweater on his shoulder, he gave his viewers a history lesson and a design lesson, all tied into one. 

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Remember his trademark sweater?  I must have liked it because for years I never left the house without one slung over my shoulders!

 

 

Joe, today, sans the sweater!

 

Talking with Joe about his start in the design business could take hours.  He’s done so many different things –  worn so many different hats, it’s remarkable.  He was in advertising and then ended up at Ethan Allen for 15 years which he followed up with a stint as editor-in-chief of Home Magazine.   He was also a national spokesman for  Glidden and Kohler.  After working on This Old House, he landed on HGTV where his national profile skyrocketed.   Now he has his own company The Joe Ruggiero collection where he designs furniture, fabric, lighting, and even art work. 

 

 

 

Joe’s upholstery line is all covered in his own sunbrella fabrics.  I really like that fabric on the ottoman – reminds me of the trendy feedbag look!

 

 

 

The Barrymore – I love this chair in Joe’s line.    This one fabric amazed me that it was sunbrella.  It looks like a silk. 

This is such an elegant chair – it looks much more than it costs.

 

 

Love these Carrington chairs and especially the ikat sunbrella fabric.

 

 

The Tribeca sofa is really nice.  But, the price points are even better.  Everything is so reasonable!!

 

 

 

This picture featuring the sofa, the Litchfield, reminds me of an interior Alessandra Branca once did.  I really like the table – this is his design too, as well as the lamps.

 

 

I really love that striped sunbrella.  His sunbrella damask fabric also covers the screen.

 

 

 

But without a doubt, the chair and ottoman was my personal favorite!   Love love love it!!!!!  Soo cute.

 

 

If you haven’t already listened, please do.  Joe was really inspiring, plus he was so very, very nice, very encouraging and extra warm! 

After talking with him, it’s understandable why he’s been so successful.  He just has that “it” factor.

 

To listen to Joe Ruggiero on The Skirted Roundtable, go HERE. 

 

To visit Joe Ruggiero’s web site, go HERE.

 

 

Your Mama Hears...

...from a little birdie we'll call Tawny Tweettweeter that a (reasonably) big residential deal recently went down in a plush residential pocket tucked into the sweeping curve of Sunset Boulevard just north of the Los Angeles Country Club where Beverly Hills turns into the arguably even more hoity-toity Holmby Hills.

Last year tech tycoon turned philanthropist David Bohnett–he founded then sold GeoCities for 3.6 billion bucks–and his pop culture-vulture man-friend Tom Gregory sold a fully restored and updated A. Quincy Jones residence in the Holmby Hills. The house, originally designed for Oscar-winning actor Gary Cooper in the mid-1950s, was bought by New York-based art world power player Larry Gagosian. Property records and previous reports reveal Mister Gagosian paid a whopping $15,500,000 for the pristine property that Your Mama hears through the a-list gay gossip grapevine that Misters Bohnett and Gregory jokingly referred to as their "country house," a jokey-joke that undoubtedly chafed and fell flat like a white girl's ass with their less financially fortunate friends.

Since 2004 and until last week when they sold it for (we hear) $23,000,000, the well-heeled man-couple's other home in Los Angeles–their "city house"–has been a sprawling, recently rebuilt, and gorgeous white-brick Georgian conveniently less than three-quarters of a mile away from their former "country house." The large but seemingly well-scaled multi-winged mansion fingers out over a rare double-wide lot in Bev Hills that's just across the street from a mansion once owned by comedienne Lucille Ball. As the story goes Miz Ball went to have a look-see at the large Bev Hills Georgian in 1955, deemed ittoo large and, while on the front porch when leaving, espied the house across the street that she and Ricky Ricardo eventually bought for $85,000. The house has since been remodeled beyond recognition.

The Los Angeles County Tax Man indicates the Bohnett-Gregory mansion includes 5 bedrooms and 10 bathrooms in 9,068 square feet. The estate also includes a large rear motor court, swimming pool, tennis court with pavilion and guest house all set into a simple but manicured landscape program of flat lawns, brick terraces and walk ways and mature shade trees.

The $23,000,0000 deal went down off-market but, we hear from a source deep inside the Beverly Hills real estate world, the property was shopped off market by a very successful Bev Hills agent-lady well acquainted with plum pocket listings, high profile clients and 8-figure deals.

The buyer, Your Mama hears from two different sources is not a high-profile Hollywood person but rather a Beverly Hills-based 3-D technology tycoon and his entertainment executive wife who together have five children.

Nearby property owners to Mister Bohnett and Mister Gregory's former crib include Peter Falk, Bruce Willis and the dee-voon coo-chee-coo-er Charo. A few doors up the block is a re-habbed Wallace Neff-designed Spanish-style residence previously owned by Madonna who bought it from Oscar-winning actor, architectural nut and high-end house flipper Diane Keaton. The proeperty is now owned by a Beverly Hills real estate magnate named David P. Margulies who bought the property in late 2007 for $15,680,000 and who, it turns out, just made a big Bev Hills residential real estate purchase of his own.

In early 2008 Hilton Hotels CEO Christopher Nassetta paid a blistering $27,500,000 for a 9 bedroom and 13 bathroom Paul Williams-designed mansion on Bellagio Drive in Bel Air owned from 1977 to 2005 Georgia Frontiere, the late owner of the St. Louis Rams, formerly of Los Angeles. Shortly after settling into Beverly Hills, Hilton Hotels relocated it's corporate headquarters from Beverly Hills to Washington, D.C. and Mister Nassetta, who also relocated to D.C., flipped the property back on the market an asking price of $29,500,000. It didn't take long to sell–it sold in early 2010–but it was sold at a precipitously steep discout to a financial fat cat named Steven Mayer for $18,000,000. That, children, is a heart-stopping $9,500,000 loss for Mister Nassetta who, Your Mama imagines, expensed that loss of a small fortune to his employer who demanded the relocation.

Your Mama isn't sure what intent Mister Mayer and his wife had for the old Georgia Frontierre estate but we do know, thanks to an informant we'll call Sherlock Holmbyhills, that almost exactly one year later the Mayers flipped the 15,727 square foot mansion in January 2011, according to property records, for $19,150,000. The buyer: David P. Margulies. Poperty records show Mister Margulies continues to own the former Keaton/Madonna mansion and it is not, as best as we can tell, currently on the open market.

Property records show that Misters Bohnett and Gregory also maintain a condo on chi-chi Lake Shore Drive in Chicago, a New York City pied-a-terre at the Sherry Netherland building on Fifth Avenue–a building you have to be rich to even look at–and, natch, a gigantic house in the Hamptons located on the Lake Agawam side of 1st Neck Lane which records show they snatched up in September of 2005 for $12,000,000. Given the recent paring of their plump real estate portfolio Your Mama would not be the least bit surprised if these gents opt to sell off–or have already sold off–one or more of their cross-country pied a terres.

photo: Bing

Celebrity Chef Curtis Stone Gets a New Kitchen

BUYER: Curtis Stone
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $3,100,000
SIZE: 4,257 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 6.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Australian celebrity chef Curtis Stone made his initial marks on the culinary world in the kitchens of some of London's better eateries and in the far reaches of northern California's ocean side community of Eureka where he's the executive chef of the highly regarded Restaurant 301. In today's world, "celebrity" chefs don't just cook in the kitchen, they cook on the boob-toob too. Mister Stone's star is in the fast lane and in the service of celebrity chef superstardom he's cooking up a glamorous in Los Angeles, CA where he's already got a celebrity gal pal–Lindsay Price–and where he recently acquired a multi-million dollar house in a somewhat secluded pocket of the Hollywood Hills.

Not only does Mister Stone have a series of cookbooks including Relaxed Cooking with Curtis Stone: Recipes to Put You in My Favorite Mood, he has a line of kitchen utensils and glassware and he whipped up recipes for in-flight meals for United Airlines. Who knew there were even actual in-flight meals to be had on United Airlines anymore. Anyhoodles poodles, due in part to his steaming boyish good looks, twinkling eyes and a pair of gorgeous guns–he was on People's 100 most beautiful people of the year in 2006–Mister Curtis television career is quickly blossoming like the exploding fuchsia bougainvillea that clings to Your Mama's front porch. In the past Mister Stone shook his well-shaped money maker with appearances on Today and Martha. He starred in some program called Take Home Chef, appeared on the third season of The Celebrity Apprentice and he lost to super-chef Bobby Flay on the always fascinating Iron Chef America. As an aside: If none of y'all have ever seen the spunky and buttery southern fried kitchen-momma Paula Dean on Iron Chef you are missing a great tee-vee moment. That bitch is crazy in each and every of the very best ways.

Anyhoo, Mister Curtis currently sits on the panel of judges and investors for The Next Great Restaurant and he's the new hostess with the mostess on the third and current season of Top Chef Masters. It shouldn't be long now before he's hosting his own cookin' show on the tee-vee program. We're surprised he's not already been snapped up by Oprah Winfrey for OWN.

Property records reveal that Mister Curtis actually bought his house in the Hollywood Hills at the tail end of December 2010 and they also show he paid a very-celebrity $3,100,000 for the contemporary crib that's perched on a bluff above Lake Hollywood. That's right, puppies, there is indeed a very scenic lake tucked up into the hills behind Hollywood. The Lake Hollywood neighborhood is not, to put it mildly, easily accessible. There are only a few very circuitous and windy ways in an out of the upscale enclave that also, as it turns out, happens to be a tourist mecca where all the Hollywood tour vans bring mid-westerners and Japanese people to take pictures of the Hollywood sign from one of if not the most supreme vantage points in the entire city. Also under the spell of the looming sign, one of the best–but unofficial, meaning not quite legal–dog parks in all of L.A.

A thick screen of towering bamboo hides a courtyard entry where water spills over the edge of an elevated boulder with the center carved out for a pond. The Paul Hinckley-designed domicile, according to listing information, shows the wood, stone, steel and glass residence measures 4,257 square feet and includes a family-friendly 6 bedrooms and 6.5 bathrooms.

The home's main rooms include a living room with dramatic vaulted Douglas Fir ceiling and a bank of French doors with horizontal mullions that swing open to a very narrow strip of land between the house and the lap lane of the backyard swimming pool. A two-way fireplace separates the living room from the formal dining room that has French doors that also open to a claustrophobically-narrow and precarious-seeming strip of land that separates the house from the lap lane of the swimming pool. The very contemporary (and shockingly expensive) Bulthaup kitchen next door to the dining room marries sleek steel and glass accents with warm walnut cabinetry that looks suspiciously like the walnut cabinetry in Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter's kitchen, which is nice but, we can assure the children, didn't cost but a fraction of what this Bulthaup kitchen surely cost.

A large meditation/spa/fitness room has what listing information intriguingly called "a luxurious indoor/outdoor bath area." A mahogany staircase leads up to the second floor where there are four family bedrooms, an office and a master suite with luxurious private facility, walk-in closet and French doors that open to a balcony that hangs over the backyard with stunning views of the canyon, lake and city lights.

The L-shaped swimming pool has three distinct areas: a large rectangular area at one end and a spa at the other end connected by a lap-swimming lane. As mentioned, the lap lane (and spa) run parallel and perilously close to almost the entire length of the rear façade. Any of the children who have been around her longer than a hot minute know that Your Mama despises those understandable but annoying child-proofing fences that surround so many swimming pools. But for safety's sake we would prefer that the pool not be slammed up against the back of the house where a tipsy or downright drunk guest could easily tumble out of the living room if someone were ever to do what Your Mama affectionately calls "The Elaine Benis," which is when after hearing some particularly juicy gossip morsel someone abruptly and violently pushes another person backward and screams "Get out!"

On the other side of the swimming pool from the house a wide flat lawn perfect for playing fetch with Fido stretches back until it drops off into the rugged canyon lands. From the backyard there's and exquisite, up close and personal view of the Hollywood sign. No matter what some of you children say about Los Angeles, living with a direct (or even indirect) view of the iconic and divinely campy Hollywood sign is a geographic thrill not so unlike having a view of Coit Tower in San Francisco, the Space Needle in Seattle or the Empire State Building in New York.

It appears that things have gotten at least sort of serious between Mister Stone and his lady-friend of just over a year, soap-story and tee-vee actress Lindsay Price (All My Children, Beverly Hills, 90210, Lipstick Jungle, Eastwick). Miss Price has allegedly moved into the house, which makes sense since she is this very moment in the process of selling her bachelorette pad in the upscale and celebrity-packed Toluca Lake area of Los Angeles.
Miss Price must really have been itchin' to live in unmarried carnality with her big-shit Australian food cooker because she has her starter house in the Toluca Lake area of Los Angeles (above) on the market for significantly less than the $1,150,000 prop records show she paid for the modestly scaled 1926 Spanish-style casa in 2007. According to the folks at Redfin, Miss Price officially listed her 2 bedroom and 2 bathroom crib in mid-January 2011 with an asking price of $895,000. Within a week the property–located walking distance both into the heart of the Toluca Lake shopping district and from Mily Cyrus's house–was put into escrow and is now marked "Pending," which means the closing is eminent.

A few flicks of the well-worn beads on Your Mama's bejeweled abacus shows that even if Miss Price and her Real Estate managed to convinced the buyer to pay full price–and, let's be honest hunnies, what's the liklihood of that?–she's facing a quarter of a million dollar loss on the property not counting any money she put in for repairs and renovations, not to mention the fat real estate fees that could easily run to upwards of thirty grand. It must be love.

A short wall, tall hedges and a motorized driveway gate hide a surprisingly tatty-looking front yard. A narrow path streaks across the "lawn" to the the front door that opens directly into the living room where this is, among the other ordinary accouterments of semi-suburban living, a fireplace and a wall-mounted television. The chestnut-colored wood floors in in the living room run throughout the house and, according to listing information, are new. A flattened archway connects the living to the dining room that has a hideously generic Home Despot "chandelier" and a decorative aspect that looks like someone tried to copy something out of a Martha Stewart magazine.

A surprisingly well-sized kitchen has ordinary but crisp white cabinetry with raised panels, engineered stone counter tops and stainless steel appliances. It's not a bad kitchen it's just an uninspired kitchen. We're thrilled Miss Price didn't try to dress the kitchen up with ridiculous clusters of fake greenery around the tops of the upper cabinets that fall just barely but painfully short of the ceiling. We recognize that not every kitchen is going to win an award for high-design but–in Your Mama's world–every kitchen, even the most humble among them, can and should have something special about it. We Miss Price's kitchen might have been nicely pushed forward and maybe even completed with the introduction of little more than an antique rug like, say, this Turkish Oushak rug from the late 19th century. Just a thought.

The remodeled facilities in the master bedroom were done up with some 1920s vintage-style however, this is not, we fear, a house of authentic upgrades but rather a house where reasonable and probably moderately expensive facsimiles stand in for actual architectural and design authenticity. We like the tile work pattern that runs around the room and in the correct circumstances we j'adore a console lavatory. But we'd bed our long-bodied bitches that console sink in Miss Price's pooper is not actually vintage but a reproduction. Nothing wrong with that, just something to note.

Moving on...The backyard isn't very large but it is a quintessentially southern California yard where a vine-draped pergola-shades a terrace off the back of the house, a citrus tree or two provides fresh-picked fruit and a swimming pool and spa with flagstone coping takes up too-large a part of the yard. The two-car garage, according to listing information was converted to a guest room/office/pool house with hardwood floors and a giant white slip-covered sectional sofa.

Since only Mister Stone's name appears on the deeds and documents we espied it does not appear to Your Mama that Miss Price and Mister Stone purchased the house in the Hollywood Hills together. But then again, we don't know a donkey from a Kardashian so...

listing photos (Stone): Coldwell Banker, Beverly Hills East
listing photos (Price): Prudential California, Sherman Oaks