LOCATION: Montecito, CA
PRICE: $7,500,000
SIZE: 6,258 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 7.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Everybody knows when celebrities and other financially fortunate sorts get married, divorced, have a baby or change their damn underwear they typically trade in one perfectly good house for a new one deemed better and more suitable to their new circumstances. Hence, Drew Barrymore—married just a year ago and the mother of an 8 or 9 month old baby girl—has hoisted her low-key hideaway in the monied community of Montecito, CA on the market with a $7,500,000 asking price.
The Hollywood royal purchased the property in early June 2010 for $5,705,000, long before before she hooked up with her handsome third husband and baby daddy, art consultant Will Kopelman. The quirky and savvy couple were married on the property in June 2012 in a traditional Jewish ceremony attended by a slew of celebrity guests including Cameron Diaz, Busy Phillipps, Jimmy Fallon, Reese Witherspoon and Scarlett Johansson. The then-preggers bride and the groom both wore Chanel, but that's really neither here not there in terms of the real estate matter at hand, is it?*
Remote-controlled gates swing open to a gravel driveway. Imagine, children, the welcoming crunch of that gravel under the tires of a luxury automobile after a hectic, traffic-choked two hour drive up the 101 from Los Angeles. Heaven. Anyways, a wide circular drive wraps itself around a stately old tree in front of the multi-winged main house where a humble red brick apron stretches out in front of the front door. The traditional, vaguely Monterey Colonial was designed by Santa Barbara architect Chester Carjola and built in 1937, according to listing details, and is currently configured with six bedrooms and 7.5 bathrooms in a spacious but manageable 6,258 square feet.
The front entrance hall is certainly large enough to greet guests comfortably but small enough to do away with the stuffy formality and in-your-face grandiosity of an unnecessarily capacious foyer like those too often found in the mortifyingly steroidal faux-Tuscan and mock-Med macmansions built in upscale gated suburbs in every corner of the country.
Double doors connect through to an elegantly proportioned and fully paneled formal living room with dark-stained wood floors, a large fireplace, and deep set French doors with original wood shutters. Built-in bookcases on either end of the long room appear to be filled with actual books and other interesting looking knickknacks and paddy whacks that Your Mama could easily spend an afternoon perusing quietly. Miz Barrymore and Mister Kopelmen have sparely but boldly furnished the room with little more than a few armchairs around the perimeter, a cream colored baby grand piano in the corner, and grouped in front of the fireplace a pair of gusty, psychedelic print sofas set on a neutral toned and decoratively au courant Moroccan Beni Ourain carpet.
The dark wood floors extend into the adjacent library that is also fully wood paneled and also has a fireplace and built-in bookcases filled with more books and objet. On the floor there are two well-worn zebra hide rugs and, in a sun lit corner, an antique-looking chess table. We'd presume that this is the room where Mister and Missus Kopeman watch the boob-toob but we sort of imagine they're the sort of people who don't watch—or even own—a television. Then again, what do we know? Maybe they're avid fans of Preachers' Daughter and never miss a ballistically tawdry episode.
The long, dinner party-sized formal dining has over-sized multi-pane windows with long views over the backyard's vast rolling lawn and white wainscoting topped by celadon colored walls. An Old School antique chandelier glimmers above the table and, for some inexplicable reason, there are a whole bunch of fluffy sheep skin pelts scattered haphazardly around the room.
Wood and glass doors in the library and the dining room open into a bowling alley length sun porch that spills out to a large, sunken red brick terrace. At the time Miz Barrymore acquired the property this sun porch had red brick flooring that was, as per listing photographs, switched out for wide plank wood painted gleaming white.
Depending on one's point of view the kitchen is either loaded with vintage charm or a hot damn mess in desperate need of a redo. A Subaru-sized center island girdled by eight (or more) bent wood stools has a sunshine yellow counter top that just about but not quite matches the rather unusual yellow and white checkerboard linoleum flooring while the white cabinetry that runs around the room has heavily shellacked dark wood counter tops. Whatever one may think of the room's decorative style, listing information indicates the kitchen is supremely equipped for large parties with two vintage-style refrigerators (that for some reason are not the same color), two dishwashers and an identical pair of heavy duty commercial-style ranges. The kitchen complex also includes a separate breakfast room, a roomy butler's pantry, and laundry room according to online marketing materials.
A total of five guest and family bedrooms are contained in two separate wings of the main house. Two upstairs en suite bedrooms each have French doors that open to Juliet balconies and three more bedrooms, each with private bathroom, are grouped on the ground floor in a separate wing off the breakfast room.
A detached, two story guest house has a bedroom, bathroom and studio space on the upper level and, down below, a two car garage/storage space. Listing photos show the garage area is done up as a kind of half-assed arty-farty man-cave with a quartet of surf boards leaning up against the wall, an old timey soda dispenser, a bevy of bicycles and a mish-mosh of furniture that all looks like it was all dragged out of Grandma's attic. There's also a separate four car garage.
Rose beds and fruit trees surround the main house and outbuildings and mature trees ring the 2.03 acre estate that has a back lawn the size of a football field. As far as Your Mama knows there is neither a swimming pool nor a tennis court on the property and for seven and some million clams for a swank spread in Montecito, hunnies, Your Mama wants a swimming pool and a damn tennis court, too.
Since 2002, Miz Barrymore's primary residence has been a gated mini-compound perched atop a private promontory on a quiet cul-de-sac in the Hollywood Hills that she picked up in April 2002 for $4,350,000. Your Mama knows at least one person who has been inside Miz Barrymore's Hollywood Hill house and we hear it's rather spectacular. Some of her nearby neighbors include doctor turned medical thriller author Vladimir Lange and Nashville actress Hayden Panetierre.
Right about the time they were married Mister Kopelman sold his sleek and modern two bedroom and two bathroom art-filled West Hollywood bachelor pad condo for $885,000. He previously had the place photographed for Elle Decor.
*Natch because the groom's father, Arie Kopelman, is a former CEO and chairman of Chanel. Missus Kopelman—that would be Will's mother—is named Corinne but she goes by Coco. You can't make that shit up, puppies. Anyhoo...
listing photos: Sotheby's International Realty