BUYER: Frances Bean CobainLOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $1,825,000
SIZE: 3,350 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Last week Your Mama received an enlightening missive from The Bizzy Boys at Celebrity Address Aerial who alerted us to a well-maintained Los Angeles, CA residence they believe was acquired–through a trust–by tatted-up teen-aged rock-and-roll heiress Frances Bean Cobain.
In case any of y'all live under a showbiz rock and don't know, Miss Cobain, now a quite striking and decidedly worldly 19 year old young woman, is the only progeny of deceased Nirvana front man Kurt Cobain, who (in)famously did himself in when his daughter was just a toddler, and Hole front woman Courtney Love, a not-particularly-stable-seeming twittering typhoon of a woman who can be counted on as rich fodder for the tabs, blogs and gossip glossies but but isn't, we imagine, on any body's list for Mother of the Year.
Miz Love and Miss Cobain have a wickedly cantankerous mother/daughter relationship. In late 2009 it was widely reported that Miz Love lost legal custody of her minor daughter and that a temporary restraining order was issued that forbid Momma Love from having any direct or indirect contact with Miss Cobain.
On the occasion of her 18th birthday in August 2010, Miss Cobain not only became a legal adult but also the sole beneficiary of a multi-million dollar trust set up in the years after her father's suicide to ensure her future financial security. Now in control of her very own and very substantial mountain of moolah, the former Rolling Stone intern turned pseudonymic artist Fiddle Tim, has indeed busted out and bought herself a home of her own in Tinseltown.
After getting word of the purchase from The Bizzy Boys, Your Mama did some asking around and our frighteningly well-informed friend and informant Lucy Spillerguts quickly confirmed the purchase by Miss Cobain of a vintage Spanish style casa tucked into a quiet canyon in the foothills just above Hollywood. Property records show the deal went down in late July 2011 in the amount of $1,825,000.
Listing information for Miss Cobain's new crib shows it measures a grown up but far from excessive 3,350 square feet with a total of 4 bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms. The two-story house, built in 1930, was designed by architect Carl Jules Weyl and retains many original architectural and decorative details such as hand-forged iron work, colorful decorative tiles, numerous stained and leaded glass windows, hand-stenciled wood beams, and vintage light fixtures and hardware.
The terra cotta tile floors in the entrance hall turn to restored wood floors in the "formal" living room that features a wood-burning fireplace, vaulted wood ceiling with exposed and stenciled beams, a row of leaded glass windows at the front of the house and a bank of pane-free French doors that open the room to a large tiled terrace at the rear of the property.
Like the entrance hall, the formal dining room has an articulated ceiling treatment and connects to the kitchen/service area through an old-timey swinging door. The fully updated and upgraded kitchen isn't huge but is well-equipped with white Shaker-style cabinetry, open shelving for daily dishes and glassware, high-grade commercial-style stainless steel appliances, and white subway tile back splashes. The kitchen complex also includes a long and narrow walk-in pantry with washer and dryer and an adjoining breakfast room with shallow barrel vaulted ceiling.
A room next to the kitchen is labeled as a "Media Rm" in the listing description of the property but is so exiguous that even a committed and unashamed tee-vee addict like Your Mama would rather scrub terlits with an old toothbrush than be trapped in that claustrophobic cubicle of a room with a blaring boob-toob.
Anyhoo, the wood-floored staircase winds up to the second floor bedrooms that include a modestly-scaled but nicely appointed master bedroom that listing information indicates includes a small private terrace, a wonderfully cacophonous tiled bathroom with separate soaking tub and stall shower, "generous closets," and a separate dressing area charmingly outfitted with built-in vanity and adjustable three-sided mirror.
Although the rear yard is, as per listing information, "pool-sized" there isn't a swimming pool. There are several outdoor areas where Miss Cobain can take advantage of the classic (and somewhat cliché) indoor/outdoor California lifestyle. The main dining/lounging and outdoor entertaining area is a tree-shaded, courtyard-like patio accessible through French doors located in various rooms on the main floor of the residence. A short, gated driveway cuts along the side of house and leads back to a detached garage currently converted to a studio/office.
It unclear how much time Miss Cobain plans to spend in Los Angeles given that she reportedly attends private, pricey and proudly arty-farty Bard College in upstate New York.
Your Mama asks that the children keep in mind that the perfectly banal day-core depicted in listing photographs reflect the tastes of the seller and not Miss Cobain who we imagine (and hope) has far less traditional and more quirky ideas about how to turn a house into a home.
listing photos: Prudential California Realty
