Mononymically known indie music iconoclast Beck, who took home his sixth and seventh Grammys earlier this year for his 13th studio album (“Colors”), has put one of the three homes he and wife Marisa Ribisi own along the same, gated street in a coveted neighborhood of L.A.’s Los Feliz area for $2.45 million. The couple acquired the then down-on-her-heels 1930s traditional in September 2017 for $1.82 million and subsequently gave the property, both inside and out, a thorough cosmetic renovation that maintained many of the house’s original details and fixtures along with a red-tile roof that gives it an unexpected and somewhat odd Mediterranean hybrid vibe. Perched on a high promontory at the end of a long and wide brick driveway above an undulating slope of fastidiously manicured lawn shaded by matures trees and woven with a serpentine fieldstone retaining wall, the two-story house measures in at a modest 2,099 square feet with three bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms.
A small, center hall entry with a vintage powder room and original stone staircase that makes a tight curl up the to second floor bedrooms is flanked by a sunny living room with brick fireplace and a dining room with bay window. A cozily compact, completely pine-paneled den off the living room has inset bookshelves and backyard access while the pint-sized, virtually monochromatic kitchen features freshly installed checkerboard pattern flooring, an immaculately restored vintage range and probably original butter yellow and sage green tile countertops on butter yellow painted cabinets. Just off the kitchen an itty-bitty breakfast room has a built-in corner buffet and behind the kitchen there’s a small en suite bedroom with wood-beamed ceiling that’s perfectly fine for an overnight guest but much too tiny not to be a disrespectful punishment for a live-in domestic worker. The smaller of the two upstairs bedrooms has a vintage, black and white tiled en suite bathroom while the slightly larger master suite provides a separate dressing room with two walk-in closets plus a restored bathroom with vintage tile work and a funky-retro, blush pink bathtub.
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Both bedrooms have direct access through French doors to a slender, slightly cantilevered veranda that stretches across almost the entire front of the house with leafy views over the affluent rooftops of the surrounding neighborhood while a covered patio at the back of the house outside the living and dining rooms is notched into the rocky hillside with a built-in brick barbecue/fireplace and a discreet stairway to a lighted and freshly resurfaced sport court scenically nestled into a ruggedly planted hillside behind the house.
Once the owners of a grand Hancock Park mansion they sold to Shonda Rhimes, who now has it on the market at almost $9 million, Beck and Ribisi’s current holdings include two other homes on the same Los Feliz street. In late 2014 they made an off-market deal of just over $1 million for an unassuming 1940s red brick cottage and almost a year ago they paid “Gossip Girl” co-creator Stephanie Savage just under $3.13 million for a late-1930s Spanish Colonial Revival once owned and given a snazzy makeover by “Flipping Out” Bravolebrity Jeff Lewis. The couple also maintains a humbly proportioned mid-century bungalow on just over an acre on Malibu’s prestigious, celebrity-packed Point Dume they scooped up in 2016 for $2.68 million.
listing photos: Rodeo Realty