Thursday, October 9, 2008

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)

31 comments:

Anonymous said...

the single word "overdone" comes to mind

Anonymous said...

It's so...beige. It's like I'm looking at a sepia daguerreotype.

Anonymous said...

This place is a HOTT mess! Ugly fake Mediterranean exterior. Everything inside is nothing but beige and barf! All the furnishings are horriid. The entry is bizzare with the open area of rouded mini-balconies, and pillard archways..... sick.

Purple carpet in the billard room? And I oh so loathe these beigey, pickled off white cabinetry all these Los Angeles homes have. No personality and they all look the same.

Anonymous said...

I would buy it but when I got loose from the basement grandmother had broken open my piggybank and took my 86 cents to buy a swig of ripple.

Anonymous said...

Yuck. It's craptacular

Mike Cook said...

Amen, Mama!

Anonymous said...

Mama: This is beyond a doubt the most garish, bad taste, vulgar and repulsive house you have ever featured.

The Saperstein pile looks more tasteful that his load of crap.

Can you imagine the type of "look at me" personality the owner has?

When the decorator was finished, he walked into the house and yelled "MORE!!!"

Anonymous said...

That place is amazing

to bad it is not in beverly hills or bel air then he would fit right in with the jonses

btw see the market today ??

remember I said the dow would go below 9000

IT HAS

now housing prices need to come down to those levels accordingly

Anonymous said...

at the time I said it would come down to 9000 was when it was at almost 15000

housing killed wall street

killed it, what a shame

despite of what I say on here.......

in the real world

3 things that I know not to talk about

religion

politics

and the state of the economy

Anonymous said...

That Tai Bo tape business must be better than the Adult Entertainment
video industry......Who knew!

Anonymous said...

Love It, Could Buy It But Can't Eversince that incident i had with Denise Richards. I've Been Banned from the hidden hills

Anonymous said...

Is there a law in california that states that over priced gaudy homes must be beige?

Anonymous said...

You hit the beige nail on the head with your comments about this monstrosity. Money can't buy good taste. Keep 'em coming, Mama, but maybe lay off the swagged curtains for a day or two...I think we've filled October's quota.

Alessandra said...

Yikes. Well, this proves that money can't buy taste.

Anonymous said...

Keep chopping the price. Race the Dow to the bottom baby!

Anonymous said...

this house is around the conner from the kardashian/jenner house

Anonymous said...

Billy, considering the outfits you wear during our Tae Bo workouts I shouldn't be surprised. But I am. This is an unforgiveable, gaudy mess. Let's live and learn, okay?

Anonymous said...

he was a z list actor who was smart and made the tae bo empire

he is worth more than most a list stars

this is one of his homes, he has many throughout the US

good for him

I suspect more celebs and the rich will be selling their mansions as they are trying to get liquid to buy into the stock market

you can now buy 90 dollar stocks of solid multibillion dollar companies for 5 bucks a share

that has never happened before

Anonymous said...

Billy Blanks may be rich but he does not have many homes throughout the United States. Check the property records.

P.S. He buys property in his own name.

Anonymous said...

Billys soon-to-be-ex-wife is far from "Fit"; henceforth, the divorce. Blanks siblings (who ran his empire for him) defected and opened their own pseduo-taebo center and took all Billys business with them. Then, Blanks knocks up his Japanese translator whom his wife allowed to travel with him abroad. Hmmmm... Makes me wonder who will end up with the motherlode of Blanks socked away moola...

Anonymous said...

I am laughing at all of you who are commenting on this amazing house that you probably couldn't afford even in your dreams and bad mouth it. I couldn't imagine what your homes look like! All of you are just jealous! To bad mouth what his wife looks like, everyone should be ashamed of themselves...she has a muscular illness (if any of you would do a little research). I would love to see what some of you look like and what your homes, apartments or trailors look like. It is amazing how everyone jumps on the band wagon to kick people when they are down. Let's see what skeleton's you all have in the closet. Probably a lot worse. This house is amazing and has won awards (again if anyone would do a little research), maybe you should think about how horrible your taste is!!!!!

Anonymous said...

All I can think about after looking at the bathroom is that some poor soul is going to be taking a bath when a small earthquke hits causing that HUGE dangerous looking flower arrangement to topple over and hit him in the head causing him to drown.

I am digging the movie room, though.

Anonymous said...

All I can think about after looking at the bathroom is that some poor soul is going to be taking a bath when a small earthquke hits causing that HUGE dangerous looking flower arrangement to topple over and hit him in the head causing him to drown.

I am digging the movie room, though.

chris said...

The single word I'd choose, and I think it really says it all, is "vulgar."

lil' gay boy said...

Oh. My. God.

That whole neighborhood is one hot mess, but this ghastly "manse" in particular. What is this penchant for covering every square foot of land with ugly studs & drywall?

With fake flowers and overwrought iron everywhere, the eye has no where to rest; I've a migraine just trying to make sense of the Clash of the Titans in the master bath; between the sacrificial altar of a tub with its dangerously polished steps, to the pickled cabinetry and that extremely ornate mirror over the sink, to the matronly window "treatments" and those "Roman" columns, I'd sooner shit in the yard and call it a John Seward Johnson "installation".

The wrought iron on the windows in the gym have me completely baffled, and I still can't figure out just what the hell that thing next to the pool table is.

But the outdoor kitchen is nicely done ––– it just doesn't look like it belongs to the same house; all the better for it, IMHO.

Anonymous said...

I don't agree on that, up on Ashley ridge this house fits in pretty well, but the rest of Hidden Hills is a hot mess between old ranch houses and mansions....

Anonymous said...

I agree this house is a little ornate and overdone, not really my taste, but to each their own! I don't think of HH as a hot mess...yes, there are some old ranch homes but that is part of its charm. They are being torn down on a regular basis to put up 10,000 sf mansions, but what is nice is the variety. This is no mcmansion neighborhood, every house is different and you drive through the gates and feel as if you are in a different world. Bad talking BBs wife is just plain mean, which has nothing to do with his taste in decoration. Oh, BTW, I loved that outdoor bar/kitchen! I saved a photo on it for when I redo my area!

Anonymous said...

I didn't realize Billy Blanks was persian.

Anonymous said...

Who knew that Tae bo brought in so much money

Anonymous said...

OK, alright already...I wasn't the first one to slam Billy's wife, Gayle, HE WAS!!! He drug that poor woman up in front of his workout class once and said, "She didn't always used to look like this! She used to be FIT...but I love her all the same!" Enough said...lay the blame where blame is due...

Anonymous said...

(years later...)

I actually like the exterior, front & back, regardless of how "fake Mediterranean" it is. and the theater IS impressive, though not my style either, Mama. The rest of the interior is...uh...fabulously overdone. topiaries in the gym made me giggle.