Post by Admin on Sept 5, 2014 18:25:18 GMT -4
Price: $2,399,999
Size: 7,882 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 5 full and 3 half bathrooms
Current digital marketing materials show The Queen's brick-faced mini-manse measures 7,882 square feet with six bedrooms and five full and three half bathrooms plus four (gas) fireplaces. There is garage space for up to five cars as well as off-street parking for at least a dozen more in the circular drive at the front and a secondary, garage-access motor court tucked around on the west side of the house. The 23-room residence—due to its murky vernacular, let's call it a Transitional Contemporary, shall we?—stands two stories tall at the front and drops to a clunky three at the back with a fully finished, walk-out basement level.
Double front doors open into a voluminous double-height foyer with hardwood floors and a swooping, curved staircase. The sculptural banister on the staircase and the lack of ceiling moldings make it clear to even to most architecturally uninformed that despite the architectural ambiguities of the exterior, the interior spaces are trying very hard to be contemporary.
The central foyer, flanked by a front-facing formal dining room and a flexi-use room furnished in listing photos with a pedigreed baby grand piano,* passes under a bridge that connects the two wings of the upper level family quarters before it steps down into a narrow yet airy double-height living room. The loungey space is sparely furnished—or, one hopes, staged—with a pair of low-slow sofas and outfitted with more wood floors, a gas fireplaces, and entire walls of floor to ceiling windows that can't help but to flood the room with natural light.
The wood floors continue on into the less formal kitchen complex that encompasses a family room and breakfast area that open to a small deck that overlooks the backyard. Although the abode's interior—uhm—archite cture strives for modernity and despite the top-grade commercial-style stainless steel appliances, the spacious and well-equipped kitchen dons an unexpectedly traditional overcoat with antiqued bone-colored raised panel cabinetry, perfectly ordinary jet black counter tops of unknown but likely expensive material, and a six-sided center island cook top that incorporates a snack counter with farmhouse-y beadboard detailing. Maybe Your Mama is simply naive—and we have, y'all can be sure, been called far worse by very dignified people—but we half-expected The Queen would have had spent the dough to install a Poliform or Varenna kitchen system in an effort to really sleek the place up but, anyways....
Somewhere, according to listing details, there's an in-law suite and the Queen's master suite on the upper level has hardwood floors, a private veranda, and a lot of wonky ceiling and wall angles that we can't understand or intellectually support. A raised gas fireplace opens on one side to the bedroom and on the other to what appears to be a roomy boudoir. The adjoining master bathroom has vaulted ceilings pierced by at least one sky light, double sinks on either side of a super-sized soaking tub set in front of a large trio of windows, and separate, glassed-in shower stall.
Lower level living spaces include (but are likely not limited to) an informal lounge with a built-in wet bar, direct access to the backyard, and a soul-sucking office-like dropped ceiling treatment.
The backyard, treeless but ringed by a thick wall of shrubbery, centers on a massive, flat concrete terrace and heated, Olympic-length swimming pool with diving board and super-sized Baja shelf. Since there's isn't a tree anywhere near the pool that can provide a shady respite for over-heated poolside sunbathers Miz Latifah installed a long and narrow—and, let's be honest, inelegant and sorta janky looking—open-air tented pavilion along one of the long sides of the rectangular pool.
C