Buy a condo in the Playboy Mansion

Hugh Hefner's original palace, located on Chicago's Gold Coast, is now condos -- and one is for sale for $2.9 million.

The front door to the mansion has a brass plate with the Latin inscription, Si Non Oscillas, Noli Tintinnare. In English: "If you don't swing, don't ring."

Friday This and Thats

Listen puppies, the celebrity real estate world has been a bit stale lately so instead of trying to squeeze blood from a turnip we're going to dump a few of the tidbits, morsels and updates that have languished on our plate the last few days and weeks.

But first we're going to have a wee update on the rumor and gossip whispered to and passed along by Your Mama regarding Candy Spelling bailing out of her $47,000,000 deal at The Century building: According to the peeps at Curbed LA who communicated with Miz Spellings publicist, the deal is on. Now that that is cleared up...

Septuagenarian sexpot Burt Reynolds (Boogie Nights, Evening Shade, Cannonball Run, Smokey and the Bandit, Deliverance, and etc.) has had a rough go of it lately. Last year the Academy Award nominated and Emmy winning actor checked himself into rehab for a nasty addition to prescription pain killers and in March of 2010 he underwent quintuple bypass surgery. Lo-werd have mercy children, Your Mama did not even know a person could have a quintuple damn bypass.

Mister Reynolds' real estate luck seems to have worn thin too. The gum snapping and famously mustachioed man has been trying to unload his water front spread in Florida for five unfruitful years. He first listed his Hobe Sound estate in 2005 with an asking price of $15,000,000, a number that by 2007 had bizarrely increased to $15,900,000. In early 2008, when Your Mama discussed the 3-acre estate, the asking price had plummeted to $10,500,000. This week, Mister Reynolds once again chopped the price, all the way down to $8,995,000.

In addition to the 12,538 square foot residence with 5 bedrooms and 7 poopers, the estate also includes private dockage capable of handling a large boat or two, a 2-bedroom guesthouse, caretaker's residence, exercise and wine rooms, a large cinema, billiard room, an office with antique paneling, and, natch, a beauty salon for keeping the aged movie icon gets his hair did and mustache trimmed.

Given that Mister Reynolds scooped up his Hobe Sound estate way back in 1980 for $700,000, he's not in much danger of losing money. Britney Spears, on the other hand...

photo: JIC Realty



Pop super star Britney Spears' had some dark days in 2006 and 2007. She shaved her head, affected a bad and sad British accent, palled around with trouble makers and party princesses like Paris Hilton (remember her?), hooked up with some shady dudes, flashed her baby maker for all the paps, and impulsively purchased a fully furnished mansion in The Summit, a guard gated community off Mulholland Drive. The Summit has long been home to a number of famous people such as Jennifer Lopez when she was still JLo and Puff Diddy–or Diddle Puff or Daddy Diddle or whatever his damn name is. JLo and Fiddle Faddle Daddy have moved on but the community remains home to a number of other famous folks like Gwen Stefani–who bought JLo's manse–and lesser lights like Holly Robinson Peete, and Ed McMahon.

According to property records, Miss Spears paid $6,750,000 for the 7,453 square foot house in January of 2007. Some reports say she coughed up $7,150,000, but Your Mama guesses the higher number may have something to do with house full of furniture Missy Hoo Hoo allegedly bought along with the real estate. The house became the scene of all sorts of crazy including when Miss Spears locked herself in her bathroom and was subsequently forcibly removed and admitted to the psych ward at Cedars-Sinai hospital.

Eventually and many more bumps in the road later, Miss Spears was stabilized with help of medication and her well being turned over to a conservatorship controlled by her Big Daddy, Jamie Spears. In early 2009, no doubt in an effort to bury bad memories and put a number of nefarious man-friends in her rear view mirror, Miss Spears and entourage decamped for another star studded gated community in Calabasas, CA where she settled into a 10,330 square foot mansion where her new neighbors included–and still include as far as Your Mama knows–Brad Wilk of the anti-establishment band Rage Against the Machine and former Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker.

Long before that, in early 2008, she had listed her Bev Hills mansion with an asking price of $7,495,000. Eventually and inexplicably the price shot up to $7,900,000. By mid-March 2010, after running through several real estate agents who removed and re-listed the house more times than Your Mama cares to count, the asking price had tumbled to $5,495,000. Yesterday the price sank another $645,000 to $4,850,000. Beehawtcha must be getting eager eager eager to dump this former house of horrors.

A few quick flicks of the well worn beads of Your Mama's bejeweled abacus reveals that best case scenario Miss Spears will lose a gut wrenching $1,900,000 on her Beverly Hills real estate impulse, and that's before any of the real estate agents get their cut that could easily take another $200,000 of out Miss Spears bank accounts. Ouch.

photo: Prudential California–Beverly Hills (Nancy Sanborn)

The Wall Street Journal reported today that the Gucci family–that would be the Italian Guccis famous for their shooz, handbags and sexed up image thanks to former Gucci guru Tom Ford–put their gigantic 14-room doo-plex penthouse atop New York City's legendary Olympic Tower on the rental market at $60,000 per month. Unfurnished only. No dogs, thank you very much.

According to listing information, the titanic, approximately 10,000 square foot penthouse on the 51st and 52nd floors of the famed tower includes 7 bedrooms and 9.5 poopers. We count 7 full and 3 powder poopers on the floor plan but either way it totals 10 terlits, a double digit number that surely requires at least one full time staff person whose sole responsibility is scrubbing terlit bowls.

According to the floor plan, the oddly configured spread has multiple entrances and thus can be divided up a number of different ways providing a variety of different living configurations. The doo-plex digs includes a vast living room wrapped in vertigo inducing floor to ceiling windows, a formal dining room, media room with a sky light, two kitchens–one an eat in number with stainless steel cabinetry, a library/second living room, and a gym. There are also, at least 20 closets, 2 curving staircases, 2 private elevators, 2 wood burning fireplaces, and a hot tub in one master suite and a sauna in the second master suite. The floor plan also shows a "control room." Our imagination runs wild thinking about what a "control room" is for.

photo: Brown Harris Stevens (Daniela V. Rivoir)

Your Mama apologizes in advance to all the children with sensitive real estate constitutions for going here, but the public wants what the public wants and sometimes we have to go where no celebrity real estate gossip should have to go. Brace yourselves.

According to Miss Tammy Tarzana, some of the peeps in the Tarzana, CA neighborhood where Kendra Wilkinson–former gal pal and bed mate of octogenarian Hugh Hefner–and her newish husband Hank Bassett recently rented a mansion are not so pleased about the ongoing filming of her eponymous reality program–Kendra–which is scheduled, according to the note sent recently around to neighbors, to continue until April 30.

One of those neighbors not thrilled with the continued disruption filming causes not to mention near constant presence of paps, according to Miss Tammy, is none other than Mel B–aka Scary Spice–and her man-mate Stephen Belafonte who, according to property records, dumped $3,159,000 in September of 2009 for their 6,727 square foot manse that happens to be across the street from Wilkinson/Basset clan's classic "Mediterranean" mcmansion.

Property records and listing information Your Mama yanked from the interweb shows the double gated Wilkinson/Bassett rental residence was last on the open market with an asking price of $3,100,000, measures 6,744 square feet and includes 6 bedrooms and 7 poopers. Other cliché mcmansion amenities include a 30-foot high impress the guests style foyer with double curving staircases, travertine floors and a large swimming pool with water slide and–drum roll please–a grotto. That's right chickens, you can take the gurl and her plastic boob out of the Playboy Mansion and give her a baby, but you just cain't take the Playboy Mansion out of the gurl.

Property records show that Kendra owns a 2 bedroom and 3 pooper condo in Sherman Oaks, CA she purchased in December 2008 for $488,000 and, because the Mister plays the pigskin for the Indianapolis Colts, the couple also maintain a big ol' brick built mansion in a fancy-schmancy gated community in Carmel, IN.

photo: Pacific Coast News

and finally...

Rumor has it that global warming soothsayer and former vice-President Al Gore has been house hunting in Oprah's back yard. Ever since November of 2009 rumors have swirled and slip-slid down the high-income gossip grapevine in Montecito, CA that Mister Al Gore himself had his eye on a pricey property on posh Park Lane.

Montecito, a bastion of conservative rich people until Hollywood (and The Big O) started snatchin' up insanely expensive estate, seems an odd choice for a ol' boy from Tennessee. But maybe he thinks California is going to drive the green economy and he wants a foothold–albeit a wildly expensive one–on the west coast? Or maybe he's just an uppity liberal too rich to live among common folk?

If Your Mama is being honest, and we always are, we don't know a damn thing about this alleged interest in and offer to purchase a Park Lane mansion. All that we know is that records do not show any recent transactions on Park Lane and according to one source in Oprahville, the local news rag recently reported that Mister Gore snatched himself up some sort of mini-mansion in Montecito. We're still digging down and around into this one trying to get to the meat of the matter and the bottom of the scuttlebutt. Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

Your Mama Hears...

...Through the Platinum Triangle gossip grapevine that there was a bit o' buzz among organizers and guests at last night's par-tay at The Century for architect Robert A.M. Stern's new line of interior furnishings about Miz Candy Spelling and her impending move to the penthouse of The Century, the Robert A.M. Stern designed residential tower in Century City, CA. According to the jibber-jabber Your Mama heard, due to the difficulty of unloading her real estate White Elephant–that would be the hotel sized Holmby Hills mansion she rather ludicrously named The Manor–Miz Candy Spelling might be having some second thoughts about the $47,000,000 doo-plex penthouse she's agreed to buy at The Century.

Take a moment, children, and try to wrap y'alls minds around the fact that downsizing for a ladee like Miz Spelling is a $47,000,000 and 16,500 square foot penthouse condominium with 360-degree views. If that ain't enough to make a person need a damn nerve pill we don't know what is.

Anyhoo, assuming there might be some truth to the scuttlebutt, Your Mama imagines there would be a serious financial consequence to Miz Spelling backing out of the big deal at The Century. Surely the ladee put down a sizable deposit to secure the two floors and we imagine she's also dropped a wad on customizing the plans not to mention funding whatever construction costs–if any–not covered by the developer. The wealthy widow can probably afford to lose 10 or 20 million clams without having to sell her Rolls or let go of her full time lint picker, but even Your Mama thinks the canny Miz Spelling would think twice before backing out of a real estate deal of this magnitude.

In short: We're skeptical of the rumor. None the less, that there's the rumor and gossip that reached Your Mama this morning via covert communique.

According to previous reports and a press release released by the developers of of the luxury high-rise building, plans for Miz Spelling's approximately 16,500 square foot aerie on the 41st and 42nd floor call for a first floor reception room, a living room with two fireplaces, a dining room that seats 24 or more, a gore-may kitchen with breakfast room and separate china storage, an office and, natch, staff quarters. Plans for Miz Spelling's private spaces on the second floor include a 4,000 square foot master suite with private terrace, dressing room and midnight pantry. Plans also, reportedly, include a garden conservatory with rose garden, massage and exercise rooms, and a private swimming pool that opens to a large terrace.

While that all sounds lavish to the nth degree, it pales in comparison to Miz Spelling's current 123-room and 56,000+ square foot residence that includes a doll museum, a beauty parlor and a barber shop, gift wrapping room, a humidity controlled silver storage room, another room for storing the china, a bowling alley in the basement, and 23 or 26 poopers. As it turns out, even Miz Candy herself does not know how many poopers are up in The Manor without consulting her terlit staff.

Some time ago, when the official listing(s) for Miz Spelling's palatial pile went viral, her attorney Stephen Goldberg told The Wall Street Journal that there had been a dozen inquiries from interested and qualified buyers regarding the 56,000+ square foot beast that carries a migraine making asking price of $150,000,000. Obviously, none of those dozen interested buyers were interested enough to cough up a number satisfactory to Miz Spelling because The Manor remains in her property portfolio and remains listed at the same $150,000,000 it was originally listed.

Word up Candy Darling: If you really want to sell that residential beast of yours, Your Mama suggests that you consider dropping the damn price. In case you did not know, there's a bit of an economic slump going on. Rich people want bargains and discounts just like everybody else, even filthy stinking rich folks. Think about it doll baby, how many big bizness barons or foreign potentate types who can afford The Manor actually want to live in a house that big, are willing to pay upwards of a hundred million bucks and–here's the important part–want to live in Los Angeles?

Clearly, not many.

Your Mama thinks Miz Spelling might be better off donating the property along with a sizable endowment for maintaining the estate to a charitable organization or perhaps filing for a zoning change that would allow the behemoth house to be used as a corporate retreat, high-class rehab facility or a home for unwed teenage mothers with embarrassed and rich parents. Just a thought.

UPDATE here.

Another Backstreet Boy Moving On

SELLER: Howie Dorough, aka Howie D
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $2,475,000
SIZE: 2,910 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: First, frosty haired Backstreet Boy Nick Carter listed his 5 bedroom and 5.5 pooper Parkland, FL mcmansion in the summer of 2008 with an asking price of $1,500,000. Lusty Mister Carter either had a real estate change of heart of a spate of bad real estate luck–not unusual for someone in suburban Flah-reeduh–because records reveal that Mister Carter's property never sold and listing information shows it's now for lease at $4,500 per month.

Then came Kevin Richardson who sold his 4 bedroom and 4.5 pooper property above Los Angeles' legendary Sunset Strip in April of 2009 for $4,078,000, The children might like to know that the selling price was slightly higher than the $3,977,000 asking price. Your Mama isn't sure to where Mister Richardson and his family decamped but according to several sources on the interweb, they own a rural spread with a large house just outside of Lexington, KY.

The next Backstreet Boy to hoist his house on to the market is Howie Dorough, otherwise known as Howie D. Mister D. first listed his Sunset Strip area property in November of 2009 with an asking price of $2,750,000. The asking price was karate chopped to it's current number of $2,475,000 in early February of 2010.

Although Mister D. failed to make the cut for the casting of Menudo, he soon found fame and fortune working his falsetto as one of the Backstreet Boys, that quintet of baby-faced young men who made million upon millions of teen and tween boys and gurls around the world pee their pants with excitement and scream bloody murder. The Backstreet Boys–or any other boy band for that matter–were never Your Mama's musical cup of tea so we could have been pushed over with a feather tickler upon learning that the Backstreet Boys were still touring as recently as 2009. We had no idea that young boys and gurls still went weak in the knees over a quintet of squeaky clean boy-men who spin, slide and glide around the stage in unison while singing sappy songs about heart aches and breaks. We thought the youngin's all prefer the musical stylings of Miley Cyrus, The Jonas Brothers and that Lady Gaga gal nowadays.

In addition to singing like a castrato in the still together Backstreet Boys–which really ought to be called the Backstreet Men now since most of these guys are married and making babies–Mister D. has occasionally appeared on the boob toob (Dora the Explorer, Roswell and Sabrina the Teenage Witch) and mentors and manages a couple of balladeers and songstresses Your Mama has never heard of including some gurl group with the preposterously silly name of No More Drama. Anyoo, Mister and Missus D. made a baby in the spring of 2009, and like Your Mama has said before–yesterday actually–on of the many reasons rich and/or famous folks think they need a new home is the birth of a baby: new baby, new house.

Property records show that Mister D. snatched up his house in May of 2005 for $1,530,000. The taxman shows the house was built in 1981 and measures 2,619 square feet with 3 bedrooms and 3 poopers. Listing information, on the other hand, shows a square footage of 2,910 and a bedroom and pooper count of 4 and 3.5.

The bizarrely configured .62 acre parcel is dee-lishusly sited up a private road, down a gated (and we're pretty sure, shared) driveway and behind two houses on a perfectly private prow-like promontory that gives the house insane 300-degree views from downtown Los Angeles to–on a clear day–the Pacific Ocean. At night, chickens, there is nothing but a twinkling carpet of city lights to be seen out of the large windows and sliding glass doors that wrap around the living areas. Say what y'all will about the fugliness of Los Angeles–and we're sure y'all will because you always do–but there are few (quasi)urban places where a person can own a house with a view like this.

The busted up and broken down black top driveway is a pity, the front facade of the house with its stacked stone accents isn't much to behold or write home about and it seems the front door is all but hidden. Difficult to find front doors ensure boozy guest will be tramping through the landscaping looking for a way into the house. In all truthfulness, none of that matters much once we get inside the house because Mister D.'s property ain't really about nuthin' but the view, children.

The main living space is an open plan affair with the living room one side, the dining room on the other. The wood vaulted ceiling allows for a kind of airiness in what appears to be a fairly modestly sized space and windows and sliding glass doors wrap around the room on three sides. The back wall of the living room area has a gigantic stacked stone wall with a fireplace and behind and open to the dining room, the not do big but very bright and well equipped kitchen that has simple flat fronted cabinetry that might be mahogany or maybe cherry or maybe just stained to look like cherry or mahogany, and a full suite of Viking brand appliances including a built in microwave and a 6-burner plus a griddle range the size of a small SUV.

The living/dining room, wrapped in sliding glass doors, gives way to a triangular shaped deck that practically hovers over Los Angeles. Your Mama can imagine that with a large market umbrella to escape the blistering southern California sunshine that this deck would be the most marvelous place to whittle away the day curled up on a comfy chaise lounge with the latest New Yorker, a stack of gossip glossies and a bottomless pitcher of gin & tonics.

Two of the 4 bedrooms are, according to listing information, masters suites each with private terliting facilities and walk-in closets. The main master, the one where Mister and Missus D. do what married people do–or do not do–in their bedrooms, has a vaulted wood ceiling, a massive stacked stone fireplace, a wall of floor to ceiling sliders that open to a narrow balcony with the sort of view most Angelenos can only dream of waking to. The master pooper, all beige travertine, beige paint and itty-bitty tiles in various shades of beige, includes a double vanity with cabinetry that matches that in the kitchen and may or may not be mahogany (or maybe cherry), a free standing soaking tub and a party-sized shower with a giant window for taking in the view while shampooing, rinsing and repeating.

One of the other bedrooms appears to have been put into use as an office/music studio for Mister D. where a couple of keyboards sit atop built in blond wood cabinetry that might be made of maple. Like most of the other rooms in Mister D.'s dwelling, the office/music studio opens to a terrace with big views through a couple of large sliding glass doors.

A long, long, long flight of stairs off the deck at the back of the house leads to a large terrace that hugs the curve of the hillside. The gently arcing terrace, a lovely spot for a sun downer cocktail party, has an above ground spa, built in bar of stacked stone, and a built in fire pit. All of this is quite nice and the view from the lower terrace is nothing if not soo-blime. However, Your Mama is concerned about the number of stairs required to access this terrace. Not only are we worried about the well-being of those with unhealthy hearts we are also quite concerned about the sanitary issues. Let's be honest chickens, what drunk dude or boozed up bimbo is going to climb all 479,000 of those steps when nature calls? Not a one of them. That means of course that unless Mister D. has put a Port-a-Potty down there people are well, we know what they're doing, right? They're squatting in the scrub that surrounds the terrace. Your Mama recommends the new owners install a damn funicular.

Your Mama really hasn't any idea where Mister and Missus D. plan to live next. Given their new roles as new parents, we can certainly imagine and understand that they might prefer a property not so conducive to a toddler wandering off the deck and tumbling down the hillside.

We're not sure where the other Backstreet Boys actually live, but property records indicate that A.J. Mclean owns a fairly modest home in the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles and Brian Littrell has an large estate in Alpharetta, GA with a 6,020 square foot mansion. As far as Your Mama knows, neither Mister McLean or Mister Littrells' homes are for sale.

photos: Everett Fenton Gidley

David Boreanaz Does the Suburban Daddy Thing

BUYER: David Boreanaz and Jaime Bergman
LOCATION: Hidden Hills, CA
PRICE: $3,350,000
SIZE: 6,269 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 4 full and 2 half bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Just before the Christmas holidays last year Your Mama discussed Los Angeles house owned and listed by actor David Boreanaz and his former ack-tress wife Jaime Bergman. At that time, their Sunset Strip area ranch house was listed with an asking price of $3,249,000. Since that time, the comely couple chopped the asking price by $100,000 and, in an impressive show of financial fortitude and real estate optimism, laid out $3,350,000 for a new house in the guard gated Hidden Hills community in the northwestern suburbs of Los Angeles. The Chicken Littles and property market Pollyannas may need to duke it out over the fact that the purchase price was slightly more than the $3,299,000 asking price.

Mister Boreanaz is the hunky and baby's butt smooth lead player and producer on a tee-vee program called Bones. His previous showbiz successes include a few years on Buffy the Vampire Slayer that, lucky for him, turned into a spin-off show called Angel. In the late 1990s Mister Boreanaz's blondie baby momma Jaime Bergman worked as a St. Pauli Girl and later bared her boobies and baby maker in the slick pages of Playboy as well as appeared in at least a couple of Playboy videos. Miss Bergman later moved into more mainstream film fare with roles like "Girl #2" in Shasta McNasty and "Buxum Blond" in Soulkeeper before she had a good couple of years playing the suggestively named B.J. Cummings on a program called Son of the Beach, a short-lived parody of Baywatch.

In the fall of 2009 Mister Boreanaz was hounded and pounded and by the press for allegedly doing the dirty with nightclub VIP hostess and alleged ho-wrangler Rachel Uchitel, the gal who was allegedly one of the 14 hussies Tiger was getting bizzy with. She denies being one of Tiger's many extra-marital lovers and Mister Boreanaz repudiates any rumor he got with Miss Uchitel. But that's really another topic for another time. None the less, at about the same time Mister Boreanaz was having to run interference with the tabloids and explain the salacious reports to his wife, Missus Boreanaz pushed out the couple's second baby that arrived in September of 2009. Surely the children know that nothing says "new house" for rich and famous types than the explosive combination of new babies and/or allegations of infidelity.

So a house huntin' the new parents went, settling on a big house in the horsey, family friendly and star studded community of Hidden Hills. According to the folks at Celebrity Address Aerial–who actually slipped Your Mama this information last December 23rd–and confirmed with property records, Mister Boreanaz and Miz Bergman bought a 1.9-acre hilltop estate with a sprawling, single story house. Information that Your Mama managed to wrench out of the interweb indicates the contemporary ranch house–listing information rather generously called it a "French Country home"–measures 6,259 square feet and includes 4 full and 2 powder poopers.

The living room has a fireplace with carved stone surround and large slab limestone floors. The home also includes, according to listing information, a formal dining room with hardwood floors and an eat-in kitchen with all the expected high-grade stainless steel appliances including a Thermador range and Miele dishwasher. The family room has a second fireplace–there are two more in the master suite–vaulted and beamed ceilings, and French doors that open to the swimming pool and and city lights view beyond. That would be the city lights of Calabasas, natch, and not the city lights of Tinseltown.

The grounds include a elementary school playground-sized blacktop motor court–not exactly the most charming material for a positive first real estate impression–a free form swimming pool, wide covered and not covered terraces that surround the house, a flat pad perfect for a $10,000 celebrity style jungle gym for the kiddies, large swathes of green grass, a small orchard, and a fully detached guest house that looks to Your Mama like it may have once been stables for the horses.

Other big name residents and property owners of Hidden Hills estates include Sharon and Ozzie Osbourne, Lisa Marie Presley who's trying to sell her spread–Melissa Etheridge and her soon to be ex-wife Tammy Lynn, Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony who recently splashed out on an 17,000 square foot sprawler, LeAnn Rimes who is currently leasing a house in Hidden Hills, Shaun Cassidy, Beverly Mitchell, Nicolette Sheridan who recently filed a lawsuit against her former employer Marc Cherry and, of course, the Jenner/Kardashian clan's homestead is located in Hidden Hills.

Some Home Made Floor Plan Porn

Last week Your Mama discussed a New York City doo-plex co-operative that filthy rich financier Robert Hurst recently hoisted on the market with a toe curling $29,000,000 asking price. If the children will recall, Mister Hurst's apartment encompasses two entire floors of an unusually slim pre-war building on Fifth Avenue and has stellar views of Central Park.

The children may also recall that we whined and went on at length about a few elements of the floor plan that gave Your Mama a serious case of the real estate agita. In the interest of settling our stomach and soothing our order craving brain thought we'd spend some time working out the wonkiness of the floor plan.

What we have above, puppies, is the existing floor plan on the left and Your Mama's proposed plan to the right. The children will want to click on the image in order to view the plan(s) at a larger size.

Your Mama changed next to nothing on the first floor of the doo-plex. This twenty-some million dollar doo-plex is, for all intents and purposes, a one room wide railroad flat and to divide any of the rooms would only accentuate the narrow-ness of the apartment. Besides, we rather like the vast entrance gallery even if it is a sea of marble floored wasted space and we saw no good reason(s) to screw with the decent proportions of either the living or the dining room.

Back in the kitchen, Your Mama made a couple of minor adjustments. On the existing plan, a peninsula counter separates the kitchen and the breakfast area. It is our opinion that the space works better without that peninsula sticking out into the room. If more counter space is required by Connie the Cook, we'd suggest extending the work island a foot or two. We also added a vegetable sink to the island.

After a consult with our imperious house gurl Svetlana, Your Mama realized the laundry facilities, located just off the breakfast area, are very poorly situated in relation to the rest of the apartment. Imagine the time and effort required to haul the sheets and towels down from the upstairs bedrooms not to mention the ugliness of dragging all the dirty linens across the grand entrance galley, through the dining room and then wind one's way through the butler's pantry and kitchen.

A better solution would be to move the machines upstairs and into one of the walk in closets that line the hallway. However, given that laundry machines must vent to the exterior of a building and we don't know if it's possible to vent the machines from anywhere on the second floor–we are not, after all, an architect or engineer with any intimate knowledge of this building–we left them in their existing location. We do imagine, in our booze baked mind, that if the washer and dryer must stay where they are we'd replace the standard side-by-side machines with a stackable set in order to provide Lucinda the Laundress with a smidge of counter top on which she can fold the owner's undergarments.

The layout of second floor of the apartment makes Your Mama all kinds of crazy and requires a radical but not particularly complicated rearrangement of rooms in order to create a more sensible and harmonious flow. First, we widened the stair landing to a more graceful width making it feel more its own space that just an extension of the very long hallway. The bigger issue is, however, the erroneous location of the library and the master bedroom in the existing plan.

We're sure some will vociferously disagree, but one of Your Mama's many floor plan pet peeves is when the most prime real estate in an apartment or home is reserved for the master bedroom. As far as we're concerned, a view such as the one from Mister Hurst's apartment is, quite simply, wasted on the master bedroom. We can understand the logic: The person who pays the bills deserves to retain some of the most prime real estate as a private sanctuary for themselves and themselves alone. However, in the case of Mister Hurst's doo-plex, there are only two direct exposures to Central Park, and one is given over entirely to the master bedroom, a room in which far more time is spent sleeping, dressing, bathing and/or fornicating and not enjoying the view.

The location of the library in the existing plan also makes Your Mama go a bit berserk. The library, a fah-fah-fancy term for a family room in this case, is stuck in the back of the apartment and couldn't be farther from the delicious view of Central Park. Even worse–and a real damn high crime of space planning in our book–is that access to the library in the existing plan is only through a small home gym. The inelegance and indignity of having to pinch past an elliptical machine and a Soloflex in order to get to the library in a $29,000,000 apartment is enough to make Your Mama need a big ol' fat nerve pill.

And too, the library–where rich people who occupy posh pre-war apartments on the Upper East Side often keep the boob-toob–is a semi-public room in which owners might occasionally want to entertain informal guests and friends. Who wants to invite a guest over for movie night or a Real Housewives of New York City marathon on the Bravo and then ask them to pass through an armpit stinky room filled with scary looking contraptions designed to pretzel and torture a body into taut submission? No one, that's who.

To fix that very serious floor plan problem, Your Mama swapped the library at the back and the master bedroom at the front. Not only is the library in the new plan easily accessible through the newly expanded stair landing and generously sized ante room with wet bar, but the best view in the entire apartment can now be enjoyed from the room that is, quite likely, the most frequently used. The fireplace is a bonus. We're sure some folks think it's 14 kinds of romantic to have a fireplace in the master bedroom, but we'd bet money and our long bodied bitches Linda and Beverly that a fireplace in a library gets far more use than a fireplace in the master bedroom. Again, one can't enjoy a fire in the fireplace iffin yer asleep. Besides it's damn dangerous to leave a fire running when drifting off to slumber.

Some might say that moving the master bedroom to the rear of the apartment is like asking the owner to step to the back of the bus. We see things differently. The location of the master suite in the proposed plan creates a cocoon of privacy from the rest of the apartment, the guest bedrooms in particular.

We replaced the gymnasium in the existing floor plan with a pass-through dressing room surrounded with built-in cabinetry and enclosed wardrobes. While Your Mama would never dream of having a fitness room in our house, we kept with the existing program and moved the gym equipment to a windowed room carved from the square footage of the apartment's smallest bedroom. The small bedroom and an en-suite pooper replaces the dressing room and master pooper in the existing plan.

We sectioned the east end of the master bedroom off to make a proper if simple master pooper and we consciously retained the tight terliting facilities in the hallway, adding a doorway in the hallway so that the entire ass end of the apartment can be used as a master suite with bedroom, dressing room, gym and two poopers. The doorway from the hallway to the dressing room was retained so that guests or other family members might also have access to the gym without penetrating or passing through the inner sanctum of the master bedroom.

We are braced for criticisms. Have at it.

Privacy Policy

I respect your privacy and I am committed to safeguarding your privacy while online at my site realestatezon.blogspot.com. At .blogspot.com, the privacy of our visitors is of extreme importance to us. This privacy policy document outlines the types of personal information is received and collected by realestatezon.blogspot.com and how it is used.

Log Files
Like many other Web sites, realestatezon.blogspot.com makes use of log files. The information inside the log files includes internet protocol ( IP ) addresses, type of browser, Internet Service Provider ( ISP ), date/time stamp, referring/exit pages, and number of clicks to analyze trends, administer the site, track user’s movement around the site, and gather demographic information. IP addresses, and other such information are not linked to any information that is personally identifiable.

E-mail Subscription
If a user wishes to subscribe to my posts via e-mail (powered by Feedburner), I ask for contact information such as name and email address. Out of respect for my users’ privacy, a way to opt-out of these communications is provided.

Cookies and Web Beacons
A cookie is a piece of data stored on the user’s computer tied to information about the user. My site use cookies for tracking visitors’ activity. Some of our advertising partners may use cookies and web beacons on our site. Our advertising partners include Google Adsense. Please check their websites for respective privacy policies.

These third-party ad servers or ad networks use technology to the advertisements and links that appear on realestatezon.blogspot.com send directly to your browsers. They automatically receive your IP address when this occurs. Other technologies ( such as cookies, JavaScript, or Web Beacons ) may also be used by the third-party ad networks to measure the effectiveness of their advertisements and / or to personalize the advertising content that you see.

I use outside ad companies to display ads on my site. These ads may contain cookies and are collected by the ad companies, and I do not have no access to or control over these cookies that are used by third-party advertisers.

You should consult the respective privacy policies of these third-party ad servers for more detailed information on their practices as well as for instructions about how to opt-out of certain practices. realestatezon.blogspot.com's privacy policy does not apply to, and we cannot control the activities of, such other advertisers or web sites.

If you wish to disable cookies, you may do so through your individual browser options. More detailed information about cookie management with specific web browsers can be found at the browsers' respective websites.

Links
This Web site contains links to other sites. Please be aware that I am not responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites. I encourage my users to be aware when they leave our site and to read the privacy statements of each and every Web site that collects personally identifiable information. This privacy statement applies solely to information collected by this Web site.

Contact Information
If you require any more information or have any questions about our privacy policy, please feel free to contact us by email at tahshinaone@gmail.com.

Last Update
This Privacy Policy was last updated on September 7, 2009.