Having completed a comprehensive restoration and renovation of a gigantic late 19th century Victorian mansion in L.A.’s sedate and wicked rich Windsor Square neighborhood — more on that in a minute, tattoo queen and reality television personality turned cosmetics tycoon and budding vegan shoe purveyor Katherine von Drachenberg, better known as Kat Von D, listed her former house in the celeb-favored Outpost Estates area of the Hollywood Hills with a $3.4 million price tag. Current listings jointly held by Jamie Sher of The Sher Group and Marissa Faith of Deasy Penner Podley show the just over 4,100-square-foot house has four bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms plus a guesthouse that sits atop a detached two-car garage at the rear of the property.
The Mexico-born entrepreneur, married in 2018 to Rafael Reyes of the cholo-goth electronic rock duo Prayers, purchased the 1920s Spanish residence in 2011 for $2.175 million. She briefly put the place on the market in 2013 with an asking price of $2.5 million and at that time the house was awash in exactly the sort of glam-goth décor one might reasonably expect to find in the home of a world-famous glam-goth icon like Ms. Von D. Much of Von D’s idiosyncratic and slightly spooky furnishings — at least the stuff she filled the place with seven years ago — has been removed and replaced with inoffensive furniture and generic artwork. While the glitzy gold and black wallpaper in the den/office remains, the variety of taxidermy that once lined the vintage mantel in the formal living room was removed, as was the luminous gold brocade wallpaper in the dining room and the truckload of velvet-upholstered carved wood furniture.
Set behind a high, vine-encrusted wall with secured entry gates, and highlighted by a turreted entry with beautifully restored inlaid vintage floor tiles, the historic home retains much of its original and elaborate architectural detailing. In the grand formal living room, carved wood friezes and an antique fireplace are balanced against a state-of-the-art media system that includes surround sound and a film projector screen that drops out of the arched ceiling. There are original, built-in arched china cabinets in both the dining room as well as in an informal lounge or breakfast room that spills out to the backyard through French doors, while the kitchen, with dark wood cabinets, high-quality designer appliances and grey stone countertops, features a cordovan-hued pressed tin ceiling treatment. Upstairs, an arched colonnade wraps around the wrought iron railed staircase and leads to a couple of guest bedrooms, at least one of them en suite, as well as a spacious owner’s bedroom replete with a cozy entry vestibule/reading nook and a roomy sitting area that looks down on the backyard.
The flat and grassy walled front garden is lined with carefully groomed boxwood hedges, and includes a quaint, tree-shaded lounge, while the backyard, much of which is taken up by the driveway that runs up alongside the house to the garage, incorporates multi-colored stone terracing, a spa and a built-in grill under a vine-laden pergola.
Originally developed in the mid- 1920s, Outpost Estates has long been a favorite neighborhood for showbiz heavy hitters. Ben Stiller once owned a stunner of a house he sold to Jason Statham who, in turn, sold it to Johnny Galecki. William H. Macy and Felicity Huffman, the latter of whom spent 11 days in prison last year for her role in the college admissions scandal, own two neighboring properties nipped up the same private drive, while David Lynch owns three houses along the same winding street and, completely invisible behind a monumentally huge hedge, Charlize Theron has long owned in a Spanish villa she’s outfitted with an array of solar panels.
At nearly 13,000 square feet with nearly a dozen bedrooms and nine bathrooms between the three-story main house and two-story carriage house, Von D’s new home in buttoned-up Windsor Square, which she actually bought nearly four years ago for $6.5 million, is several times larger than her old house. The property, which was prominently featured in the 2003 Steve Martin remake of “Cheaper by the Dozen,” was previously the longtime home of British screenwriter Lucy Dahl and her American husband John LaViolette, the former the daughter of Oscar-winning American actor Patricia Neal and acclaimed British author Roald Dahl.