Sitcom Star Sara Rue Snags Lake Hollywood Ranch Residence

BUYER: Sara Rue
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $1,754,500
SIZE: 2,868 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Uncharacteristically for a Tinseltowner, sitcom actress and formerly zaftig Jenny Craig shill Sara Rue tied the marriage knot with a non-Tinseltowner. She and school teacher Kevin Price, who met at a party playing a boozy and rather dire sounding game called beer pong, hitched their romance wagons in May (2011) on the beach in Malibu (CA). More characteristically for broom jumping Tinseltowers (and others with the financial wherewithal to do so) Miss Rue and her new mister soon went on the hunt for a house in which they could live out their newly wedded bliss.

The low-key couple eventually settled, as per The Bizzy Boys at Celebrity Address Aerial and property records alike, on an architecturally very ordinary (if not exactly inexpensive) ranch-style residence in an upscale if somewhat remote neighborhood near Los Angeles' lovely Lake Hollywood. Yes, dear hearts, there is actually a good-sized and quite scenic lake tucked up into the otherwise parched mountains above Hollywood.

Property records and other online resources show Miss Rue and her new mister closed on the Lake Hollywood home just before Christmas (2011) and paid $1,754,500 for the single story residence completely remodeled and sold by a prominent boo-teek hotel industry executive who bought the house just over four years earlier for $1,720,000.

New York City born and bred Miss Rue, now in her mid-30s with flaming, Jessica Rabbit red hair, has been working her Hollywood stuff since the late 1980s and early 1990s when she appeared in a variety of boob-toob series Your Mama ain't never heard of such as Grand, Phenom, and Minor Adjustments. In 1999 she landed on dumb but funny Popular with (among others) the high-larious Leslie Grossman who worked.it.out.but.good as the ostentatiously rich, insanely vain, decidedly moronic and mean-mean-mean phrase turner Mary Cherry.

Since then Miss Rue has appeared numerous times in small parts on the silver screen (Pearl Harbor, The Ring) and worked steadily in a boatload of sitcoms that included Less Than Perfect and Eastwick. She currently makes occasional appearances on Rules of Engagement and last year, in 2011, she hosted a reality program called Shedding for the Wedding in which five overweight couples all lived together and tried to drop some pounds before their respective weddings. 

Anyhoo, listing information shows Miz Rue (and Mister Price's) new pad sits on a mostly flat, triangular-shaped .29 acre parcel almost directly beneath the Hollywood sign and measures 2,868 square feet with 4 bedrooms and a total of 3.5 bathrooms.

The double-door entry stretches straight back to the rear of the residence where a a long (and somewhat narrow looking), L-shaped open plan living/kitchen space has variegated chocolate brown hardwood floors, a pitched ceiling, fireplace, and multi-paned windows and French doors that connect to a deep and wide covered patio that overlooks the backyard, the surrounding canyon lands and up towards the Hollywood sign. A separate formal dining room has an unexpected wood ceiling and a cluster of seemingly random artworks and ephemera mounted on one wall.

The floors switch from wood to polished concrete in the kitchen area where crisp, snow white Shaker-style cabinets are topped with glossy black counter tops (of unknown material). A full complement of over-sized, top-grade appliances include a six-burner range, second under-counter oven, and full-size side-by-side fridge and freezer. The kitchen opens over an L-shaped snack bar peninsula to breakfast area the previous owners used as a home office and a small den/family room the previous owners used as a child's play space.

In addition to the three guest/family bedrooms there is an expansive master suite that encompasses a high-ceilinged bedroom area with (too) trendy wall covering behind the bed and a separate sitting room with full wall of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and backyard access through a sliding glass door. The master bedroom and sitting area appear to have a different wood floor finish than seen throughout much of the rest of the house. We know from experience it's not always easy to match new wood floors with old wood floors but certainly a better solution than this was available. Anyhoo, the attached master bathroom has suave-looking honed marble tile flooring, a double sink vanity, free-standing old-timey (but probably not actually old) soaking tub, and a separate (unenclosed) shower space.

Forget for a moment children, that the marble tile work in the shower area inexplicably stops painfully short of the high vaulted ceiling and ignore the unnecessary black tile border around the shampoo and soap inset. Focus instead for a moment on the fact this shower does not appear in listing photos to have any sort of enclosure on two sides. That means, of course, the toilet, the adjacent wastebasket, probably the colorful but banal painting of a woman in a red dress, and most certainly the floor around the shower area would have become sopping wet every time someone stood under the spray. Your Mama cannot fathom why the previous owners opted to not enclose the shower. Perhaps they had a minimum wage gal who popped by every day for an hour or two to mop up after their morning showers? Whatever the reason(s) it just seems functionally short sighted not to enclose the shower and Your Mama genuinely hopes Miss Rue and her new mister have the good God damn sense to at least hang a plastic shower curtain around the thing and spare themselves the hassle of all water spraying out all over the place every time they shower. But enough about that nonsensical nonsense.

At the bedroom end of the ranch house, an additional (approximately) 400 square foot bonus room with concrete slab floor, shallow vaulted ceiling and an attached half bathroom might easily (if not inexpensively) be converted to a media room, arts and crafts studio, karaoke lounge or, as seen in listing photos, left to its own devices as a rather anemic looking home fitness room/yoga space.

The generous (if hardly e-stately) backyard areas that wrap around three sides of the residence can be divided into at least five different areas: a small gated motor court for additional off-street parking and roller skating; a flat grassy pad for the pooches (with detached garden shed and di-rect view of the Hollywood sign); the aforementioned deep and wide covered patio (with herringbone patterned brick floor and adjoining built-in barbecue area); and a seven-sided, solar-heated swimming pool ringed by a brick sunbathing terrace and a small wood deck and curtained poolside cabana. Sliding glass doors lead from the pool deck into the den/child's play room for easy access to the kitchen facilities and a convenient bathroom.

The children should note that it was the hotelier and his wife who are responsible for the glam-tinged and, let's be honest, somewhat cliché Hollywood Regency-esque day-core seen in the high-quality listing photos. Your Mama doesn't thinks it's all so awful, it's just so thoroughly one-noted and not unlike, well, a boo-teek hotel. We do so love to spend a few nights now and then in swanky boo-teek hotels with The Dr. Cooter but we do not care to live in one. But that's really neither here not there since, we assume, the previous hotel exec owner and his wife took all the Kelly Wearstler meets Jonathan Adler meets David Hicks meets the Rose Bowl Flea Market day-core with them and Miss Rue and Mister Price will undoubtedly put their own decorative stamp on the interior (and exterior) spaces.

Some of Miss Rue's new and nearest neighbors include bow-tied celebrity stylist and budding Bravolebrity Brad Goreski (It's a Brad, Brad World) and his long-term television writer man-beau Gary Janetti. Also in the 'hood and play-date close are celebrity chef and reality television denizen Curtis Stone (The Best Thing I Ever Ate) and his baby momma actress Lindsay Price (Lipstick Jungle, Beverly Hills, 90210) who, as it turns out, also starred in the short-lived sit-com Eastwick (2009-10) with none other than her new neighbor Miss Rue. Mister Stone and Miss Price, some of the children may recall, plunked down $3,100,000 for their 6 bedroom and 6.5 bathroom Lake Hollywood house just last year.

listing photos: Everett Fenton Gidley for Coldwell Banker / Beverly Hills South