SELLER: Maggie Lawson (and James Roday)
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $2,200,000
SIZE: 2,892 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Although they haven't married, made a baby or split up—at least not that Your Mama knows—long-romantically involved boob-toob co-stars Maggie Lawson and James Roday have none-the-less put their contemporary, eco-conscious residence in L.A.'s leafy and star studded Oaks nabe in Los Feliz with an asking price of $2,200,000.*
She may not be a tabloid staple or household name in the vein of, say, newly-married movie star Christina Ricci—who, as it turns out, re-listed her house in The Oaks this week with an asking price of $1,695,000—but Miz Lawson's still got a reasonably long list of Tinseltown credits going back to the mid-1990s when, at just 17 years old, the native Kentuckian scored a recurring role on the sitcom Happily Ever After. She later popped up on Party of Five, Inside Schwartz and It's All Relative before she landed her starring and to date seminal role on the detective-comedy Psych, currently in its 8th (and possibly final) season.
Since 2006 Miz Lawson has been romantically entangled with her frat-ishly handsome and usually scruffy-chinned, Psych co-star James Roday. According to Your Mama's research on the internets, Mister Roday honed his craft for the stage in New York City and, in addition to shaking his money maker on the cable tee-vee, scratches his thespian itch as the co-founder and co-artistic director of the Red Dog Squadron theater company in Los Angeles. In 2012 Mister Roday (and a partner) purchased the venerable, two-stage El Centro theater in Hollywood, just north of Larchmont Village.
Record show the property was purchased by Miz Lawson in August 2011 for $1,775,000; Only her name appears on the deeds and other publicly available documentation associated with the property but, for our purposes today, we're just going to assume the couple cohabitates. Current listing details show the modern-minded two-story house sits behind a tall and thick bamboo hedge and has four bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms in 2,892 square feet of recently refreshed interior space. The house was originally built in 1953 but was, prior to Miz Lawson's purchased, reworked and expanded to its current size and configuration.
A quick comparison of current listing photos with those from the time of Miz Lawson's purchase show she, presumably with Mister Roday's input, stripped the interiors of most (but not all) of its faux-rustic/modern organic detailing—i.e. wood paneling in the den and wood trim work around windows and doors, and completely transformed the up-sloping backyard with a series of terraces, a solar-heated swimming pool and spa, and a snazzy lighting system that at night bathes the backyard in yellow, blue, and purple light.
There are white wood floors throughout the open-concept main living area that includes an entry hallway with built-in cabinetry for shoes and scarves (and whatever); a fairly casual and comfortably furnished "formal" living room with soaring vaulted ceiling and a monolithic concrete fireplace that pretty much extends the width of the room; and an adjoining, sky-lit tee-vee den custom-fitted with a massive glass wall that slides open to completely expose the room to the backyard.
The also sky-lit dining room next door has an indentation in the back wall fitted with a funky but functional wall-mounted buffet/booze bottle storage apparatus and, on the opposite wall, a three-stool snack bar and a window pass-through to the den.
The dining room opens on one end through glass doors to backyard and on the other to an also sky-lit kitchen with glossy white flat-fronted cabinetry topped with counters the exact color of concrete. There are open shelves fashioned from rough-hewn wood planks, a super-cute built-in dog feeding station under one of the two huge windows, and top-grade commercial-style appliances that include a built-in wine fridge, a built-in coffee maker, and a glass-fronted fridge-freezer that—swear to God, butter beans—retails for around $16,000.
There are two reasonably sized but hardly huge guest/family bedrooms on the main floor. One opens to the pool and both share a spacious if vexingly tiled hall bathroom. (There are mottled pinky-beige tiles on the floor, chocolate brown tiles in the otherwise glassed-in shower, and (downright mortifying) flesh-toned tiles on the vanity counter top and around the vintage, buff-colored tub. Anyways...)
A a barely noticeable stairway next to the front door leads up to a tiny landing. On the right there's a long but narrow bedroom with a quirkily-tiled attached bathroom. (Given it's size and proximity to the master suite Your Mama imagines the room might best be utilized as a meditation space, home office, work out room—as Miz Lawson had it set up—or, for those so inclined, an S/M dungeon.) To the left, a short hall lined is with closets on one side and sliding glass doors on the other that open to a small balcony. The master bedroom itself it large enough to accommodate a sitting area and has clerestory windows and a voluminous wood-paneled vaulted ceiling. The attached master bathroom isn't particularly big—and it is tiled with an odd and chunky-looking if not entirely unappealing mustard colored glass tile—but it is reasonably well-equipped with two two sinks mounted on a wooden counter, a separate soaking tub and shower, and a semi-private cubby for the crapper.
The newly re-worked backyard features a semi-sunken lounge area next to the swim-jet equipped swimming pool and spa. A long concrete flight of stairs up the middle and a puzzle-like series of smooth concrete retaining walls and flat terraces laid with low maintenance and water saving faux-grass step up the hillside to the uppermost level. Listing photos show there's a hammock on the top shelf and, quite honestly, Your Mama wouldn't mind curling up there on a warm, breezy afternoon or two with Haruki Murakami's magnificently epic 1Q84. But we digress...
Other features of note include earth-friendly faux grass, a camera-equipped security system, wiring for sound inside and outside, an attached two-car garage with direct entry, a roomy laundry room discretely tucked behind the kitchen along with a discreetly placed powder pooper.
We don't find any (easily accessible) evidence that Miz Lawson and/or Mister Roday own in Los Angeles although we did discover that in January 2012 Miz Lawson sold a modest bungalow in an area of Los Angeles marked "Terhangeles" on Bing's mapping system for $805,000; She purchased the 1200-ish square foot house inDecember 2003 for $694,500.
Mister Roday, as per Property Shark, owns a 1,138 square foot one bedroom and two bathroom apartment at the Jade building in New York City's ever-more-trendy and expensive Flatiron District that he picked up in January 2008 for $580,000. As it turns out this isn't the only apartment Mister Roday has owned in the slick and chi-chi building; Its interiors were famously designed by Mick and and Bianca Jagger's jet-setting jewelry designer daughter Jade. In February 2009 Mister Roday shelled ouyt $1,191,000 fone bedroom and two bathroom unit on the ninth floor that he sold in September 2012 for $1,270,000.
*Besides inexplicable capriciousness, financial concerns, and a myriad of other possible explanations, three of the top reasons rich and/or famous people sell one perfectly good house and buy another (usually larger and more expensive) house is because they've married, divorced or made a baby.
listing photos and floor plan: Nourmand and Associates