Friday, January 16, 2009

A Couple of Producers List Design-y House in L.A.

SELLERS: Gabrielle Stanton and Harry Werksman
LOCATION: Hillside Ave, Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $1,880,000
SIZE: 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms
DESCRIPTION: ...Includes: large LR, DR & entry hall, kitchen, den/media room & master BR w/ dressing room & custom bath (including Bisazza soaking tub, custom-made dual faucet Corian sink, Porcher toilets & Phillipe Starck fixtures). Lower level guest BR & enormous bonus room perfect for home office/creative space. Covered patio & rear yard. Large garage w/ direct access, 3 fireplaces & new systems throughout.

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Listen children, although all sorts of unconfirmed whispers and rumors are floating down the gossip grapevine about famous folks fixin' to move house, today is a bit slow on the celebrity real estate scene so today we're gonna discuss a couple of Emmy nominated tee-vee writer/producers named Harry Werksman and Gabrielle Stanton who recently put their Regency style residence in the foothills above Hollywood Boulevard on the market with an asking price of $1,880,000.

We know most of you haven't a clue who these people are, but iffin y'all will simmer down and quitcher bitching Your Mama will tell you. Mister Werksman and Miz Stanton, partners in both work and life, have extensive credits on award winning programs such as that tired Grey's Anatomy program, Ugly Betty and, most recently, a short lived vampire detective drama called Moonlight which Your Mama has neither seen nor heard of.

Back in August of 2002, about the time the boob-toob power pair's tee-vee project The Invisible Man was wrapping up, property records show they forked over $700,000 to purchase their house on Hillside Avenue. We're sure some of the snootier Angelenos will bristle and gripe about the too close to Hollywood not close enough to Bev Hills location, but Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter rather like a property near rugged Runyan Canyon where we like to walk our exercise bodied bitches Linda and Beverly side by side with all the heaps and hordes of show bizzers who walk their pooches and work their glutes on the canyon trails.

According to information we received from a gal we'll call Jean Pool, the Werksman/Stanton house was a dump when it was purchased and clearly Miz Stanton and Mister Werksman–with, according to listing information, the assistance of the folks at the Fitzsu Society–spent boo-coo bucks giving the place a full face lift and do over in a Dorothy Draper-ish Hollywood Regency style that has been re-jiggered (and some say copied) by hot shot decorator Kelly Wearstler.

Listing information and prop records reveal the house measures 3,283 square feet with three bedrooms and 3 bathrooms. In addition to the entry way with its high ceiling, shiny lime stone looking floor, vintage 1970s chandelier and luscious Lucite side table, a large formal living room with beige shag wall to wall carpeting has been a little too minimally furnished by the Fitzsu folks with two clean lined beige ultra-suede sofas facing each other with a couple of squat coffee tables from Ikea in between and a stainless steel and glass étagère for displaying knick-knacks and doo-dads has been situated to the side one of the homes three fireplaces.

The dining room, also done up in a minimal manner, features a wall of (not quite centered) glass sliders, pretty tree top views and all kinds of translucent furnishings includes a Lucite legged dining table and a couple of Phillipe Starck Louis Ghost Chairs which are only visible to children with 20/20 vision. The barely there day-core is completed by an atom-inspired chandelier that has been hung too high and is coveted by Your Mama, and a graphic black and white Japanese anime-like Panda painting which creates a well played visual tension with the Lucite legged dining room chair that have been upholstered with mis-matched and wildly colored Pucci-like fabric.

A small room that looks like a minimalists take on a library has been simply outfitted with a few free standing and well stocked book shelves, an orange ombré area rug and a classic, always appreciated by Your Mama Mies van der Rohe Barcelona chair and ottoman. With its louche sectional sofas and built in wood book shelves, the den/media room offers a cozy spot to tuck in for the evening with a stack of all the latest gossip glossies and a giant gin and tonic or to view the fabulously tacky and childish antics of The Real Housewives of Orange County, one of Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter's favorite reality tee-vee guilty pleasures.

The uber femme master bedroom has been worked over–and, quite frankly, a little over-worked–with wall to wall lavendar shag carpeting and a large print floral wallpaper behind the bed that probably looked au courant when it was installed but now looks a little dated design wise. Nothing a nice gay decorator can't fix in the twinkle of an eye. All the clothes horses will appreciate the full wall of floor to ceiling closets with frosed glass sliding doors which give the clothes a ghostlike appearance that would surely scare the skin off Your Mama in a half-asleep booze haze in the middle of the night. The frosted glass closet door treatment has also been applied to the large boo-teek like dressing room with its large lavender shag area rug, crystal chandelier, and yellow tufted stools that look too damn short for a fat ass like Your Mama to sit on comfortably.

We recognize the highly stylized master bathroom will not be to everyone's taste and it's absolutely not one that Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter would want in our home, however, we gives the couple credit for boldly and fearlessly going right over the interior design top with the funky juxtaposition of a hyper-modern glass box of a shower, dusty pink vanity table with ornate gold pulls, and glittery nickel and crystal sconces flanking the make-up mirror. The yellow tufted stool and blue and lavendar glass decanters are just icing on a shamelessly decadant decorative cake an an intricately patterned gold and white wallpaper surrounding the Bisazza tile soaking tub jumps up the glamour quotient to am über-luxe but almost unbearable level. With all that square footage devoted to the master bathroom, we'd have preferred the posh Porcher brand pooper be placed in a more private spot.

According to listing information, the lower level includes a guest bedroom and bathroom, a location which pretty much ensures the homeowner will not have to listen to their guests fight, fornicate and/or defacate. A large bonus room on the lower level can be used for a home office/creative space or perhaps a dungeon for the S/M inclined.

The outdoor space appears to be limited to a deck at the rear of the house and a sliver of land that aspires to, but pretty much fails, at being a backyard.

Although we don't know why Miz Stanton and Mister Werksman would want to sell after spending much time and money birthing their re-done residential baby, but if we've said it once, we've said it four hundred thousand times, the fickle real estate workings of the rich (and famous) are well beyond our comprehension.

47 comments:

Anonymous said...

That bathroom is amazing. Totally agree on the toilet.

Anonymous said...

Doris Day on acid is the only way to describe this mess. It honestly gave me a headache looking at it.

Anonymous said...

Good Lord when did we slip back into the 70's?

Anonymous said...

Retro 1970s. Oh, my. I guess I could get into some aspects of it, but I don't like the closets, the bedrooms, and gold-fixtures in bathrooms. Toilet also must have its own room. Very weird. This place gives me a pleasant deja vu and yet offends me, at once. The framing elements on the facade of the house are really awful.

Anonymous said...

It looks like they did as much as they could with what they were handed without ripping the place down to the studs. In some rooms it works, in others, not so much.

Anonymous said...

I've never seen anything like it.

Anonymous said...

AWFUL!!!!!!!!!!!!! Wouldn't take it if they gave it to me.

Anonymous said...

24% a year increase in value for six straight years. REALLY !!!

Uh, NO

Anonymous said...

Can you say tear down !!!!

Anonymous said...

This home is FABU!

lil' gay boy said...

Yes, I can ––– tear it down; please! I'll go you one better ––– burn it down.

(here come all the wildfire activists...)

But seriously, I've never seen such effort expended to create a pastiche of snapshots in time that misses the mark so badly. A number of covet-able items wrapped in a vulgar, charmless skin and shoehorned onto an unattractive lot.

"Regency" my ass ––– with the abortive, Garden State Brickface mansardesque roofline & the faux paneled entry & garage doors, it looks like the west coast version of the Karen Horney Clinic for Clap.

One could call it the first 3G house; if going for bon mots like Ghastly Grey Gardens or just Gaudy Gimcracks & Geegaws.

Love what the sinners attempted, hate the sin.

Anonymous said...

ouchy ochy

Belongs in the Valley and not a fabulous part of the valley oh my. Looks dreadful..

Selling Price 800K at best ouchy

pch said...

For regency architecture to work, in my opinion, it needs to be completely over the top. This one goes too far to be tasteful, but not far enough to be ironic and clever. It looks like the "regency" model in a tract, differentiated from the "spanish" and the "tudor" only by roofing material and door design.

You could try to remedy the situation by giving the roof more height, expanding it across the entire facade, and adding some stylized dormer thingamabobs to the tops of the windows and the front door. But it'd be easier to remove the mansard roof (term used loosely) and do this as a straight-up modern.

I'll leave the interiors to others...

Anonymous said...

at first glance i was all, "ooo barbie dream house" then while studying the photos, i started to get hungry. and so here i sit, battling the urge to snack. so in honor of my new 2009 resolution, "stop eating crap", i will jot my musings:

1. curb appeal: parochial school

2. foyer/entry: cocaine

3. beige living room: 70s divorce

4. dining room: froot loops

5. barcelona reading room: f*cking in that chair

6. crazy wooden den: pancakes with log cabin syrup

7. bedroom: japanese step mom

8. foofy dressing room: sobbing on floor after getting dumped by anderson cooper, eating cupcakes and drinking jager

9. hot ass bathroom: me n kelly wearstler making out in the shower and washing with coconut body wash

10. reedy woven chair balcony: smoking my parliaments reading my copy of "all that glitters" by pearl lowe.

love,
Babe

Anonymous said...

To market the house, they could have at least removed all hint of retro-french-gaudy ornamentation.

Anonymous said...

Still, the closet is devoon. However, the Mansard roof kills it for me just like when Brad Pitt opens his mouth.

Anonymous said...

It all looks so....well..."gay"...in a unflattering way. And the bed in the bedroom unspeakably awful.

Anonymous said...

"Doris Day on acid"...perfection of a comment.

Anonymous said...

Perfect setting for a short film about the Wonderland murders

Anonymous said...

Ugly from the inside out. These folks should hire a better decorator if they make any profit from the sales.

Anonymous said...

7:31 PM, I agree. Just stripping away every cheap looking outdated french flourish and replacing it with standard Home Depot stock would have made a 1000% improvement for minimal cost from a sales standpoint. The realtor must be either new or dense to let the sellers list the place looking like that in the current depressed market.

Anonymous said...

Whoa, upon closer reading of Mama's article, it sunk in that the owners actually paid alot of money to do the place up like it is. I'm speechless. Not my taste at all.

Anonymous said...

The french panelled doors (garage and front) and white wrought iron handrail in the front hall need to go. They scream tacky, making it difficult to embrace this house regardless of what comes beyond, some of which is good, some not. The nots which need to go include the wallpapers, purple/lavender/rose/mustard color scheme, and that gawd awful bathroom furniture piece. The rest is ok, but nothing to write home about, or maybe I'm just having trouble appreciating it amongst the numerous decorative touches which draw your eye that I just plain don't care for.

Anonymous said...

My goodness alive..... opening up the Fabulous Momma's blog has hurt my eyes to the highest extent. This house is so frightening that I ran to the kitchen for some stomach medication pronto. My goodness alive I am sickened..... The outside is so scary cheap and tautry...... The interiors are trying to be something fabu but only wind up being tackybu.

The whole thing is like an alice in wonderland meets the wizard of oz meets Kelly Wearstler's cast aways oh my!

This is Los Angeles.. perhaps some other mentally/interior derranged people will find this fabulous and offer up some coins..

There is a fabu house with guest house... charming on Marmont for LESS money with views/pool/nice touches on the market.. HELLO!

Anonymous said...

Yes.....the outside is TAWDRY

Anonymous said...

the house sort of looks like a hollwood regency house in it's embryonic stage. Draper and Wearstler both have a "more is more" philsophy, and none of that is at play here except maybe in the bathroom. Also there is a lot of mid century modern thrown in there as well, and the house does not have a coherent look. It's a shame because MCM and HR styles mix well together when you use colors, textures, or art to link them.

Anonymous said...

HouseFlipper Extraordinaire's Opinion:

Inside: Can be easily fixed. Most of this furniture is actually quality and originals.
Outside: Major Overhall. Tacky Beyond Extreme. Redo the lines/windows/doors/garage doors..turn it mid century and bingo..... with the right fixing of the interiors.. mostly color(s) bingo again.. a winner.

The price however is way to high. They must be on cocaine! At least there are many shiny surfaces to snort it up like some regency style fluffies.

Anonymous said...

Pop in a great cocktail mambo CD and have a marvelous party at this home. It just looks like the place for a wild affair where a fight breaks out between the host and hostess, she throws her martini at him, he grabs her forearm, and the guests gather their Gottex beach cover-ups and disembark to their brown Mark III's and reassemble later at the club! I'll buy it darling.

Anonymous said...

Here ye here ye.... the 70s are roaring back! wild sex.. drug infused parties..... just think of all the stains in that bedroom and bath oh my!

Anonymous said...

How is everyone hating on this house??? It's like 1000x better than what most celebs have(minus the Ellens and Brad Pitts of the real esate world).

Like, look at the interiors of Oprah or Nicolas Cage's houses. These people shown actually have something different, and put thought and time into the design.

Anonymous said...

The idea that people put thought and effort into this visual nightmare makes things MUCH worse than if they had thrown it togther without.

Anonymous said...

I would love to go through this house with a blue light

Anonymous said...

There appears to be a current emerging decorating trend with regard to color scheme that I can only describe as being cartoonish, and this home reflects that. Here's hoping it's short lived and passes quickly.

Anonymous said...

just spit out my coffee looking at these pictures.

Anonymous said...

Oh come one people, this house is not nearly as bad as you are making it out to be.

Compared to some of the schlocky middle class interiors we see, or the faux Tuscan crap out in Calabasas or the over-ornate places with swagged curtains and beige everything.

Admittedly there are some rough spots here (ie the wallpaper and lack of design thought in the living room), on a scale of 1 to ten of what we children normally see here, this is a solid 6.5 and def. not a one.

Anonymous said...

Give it some time, peeps. It grows on you.

OK, it doesn't. Tear the damn thing down.

Anonymous said...

Oh, dear. Love the closet - otherwise the phrase that pops to mind is "trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear."

Anonymous said...

Overall, I hate it - yet it's refreshing and uplifting in a way. What I like about it is that it's not another tan faux-finished mock Mediterreanean pile filled with brown overly ornate and overscaled "Old World" furniture we see so much of - ugh. At least this house is unique.

Anonymous said...

loverobes from ikea, and the woven dining set outdoors, and the barcelona chair, i wish there was pics of the kitchen

Anonymous said...

I'm with you Trudy. It isn't MY taste but it is what a lot of people (apparently not the children) like right now.

The closet doors are ok in the dressing room but too much to have them in the bedroom.

It will sell.

Anonymous said...

I think these industry folk designed it for a crazy set house and when filming is done put it on the market... surely people can't reside in such a candy faux palace.... well if they do they high on sugar and licking the walls .. or each other maybe

Anonymous said...

Hollywood regency is all about late 1940s glam not 1970s coke den.

Anonymous said...

Darlings... such negatives written today. How would you like your home critiqued!

While not my personal style I imagine there are some that would love this display of decadent exuberance.

Kisses sweet things..... thing happy thoughts.

Anonymous said...

Seeing that white wrought iron railing caused me to have immediate flashbacks to my childhood in the 70s, when we lived in a house on Long Island built in the early 60s. All the houses were pretty much the same, but even then they seemed weird to me since my parents had already replaced them. seems like this house was probably untouched for eons, and the designer figured it was cool to leave them. I think not.

Take out the palm trees and the sloping site and this could be any of these Long Island houses that have been "renovated" after about 30 years. As someone else said, ditch the roof and make this place totally modern.

luke220 said...

New price already- $1,699,000!

Anonymous said...

Excuse me, is anyone actually pay this kinda price for it? It's not all bad, but it's not appealing well as a whole at all, and surely most people perceived it that way. Has the price moved recently?

Elli

Anonymous said...

Did this nightmare ever actually sell, and if so, what was the final price, if that's available?