Gwynnie and Chris Spread Out

We're gonna get our celebrity real estate feet wet this misty Monday morning with a little tidbit about Oscar winning actress Gwyneth Paltrow and her Grammy winning rock star huzband Chris Martin who, we all know, warbles for the colossally successful band Coldplay.

A few months ago Your Mama heard from someone who would know that that Gwynnie and Chris were shacking up in a massive, leased estate on Mandeville Canyon Road in Brentwood, CA. They've since moved on, the house they leased in Los Angeles is listed for sale with a breathtaking $24,000,000 price tag and more recently Gwynnie and Chris have been seen humping around the Hamptons where the comely couple own a sizable, shingled house with a detached exercise studio–natch–in sleepy but still traffic clogged Amagansett. Presumably the Friends of Madonna have been popping into Manhattan–probably by helicopter–every now and then where they possess a posh penthouse pad in TriBeCa for which they splashed out $5,100,000 in Spring '07.

While spending the summer frolicking and detoxing in the Hamptons, Gywnnie has found time to offer woman and gays her own version of homespun lifestyle prescriptive advice on nourishing their inner aspects as well as oversee construction on a major expansion of their primary home in London. Gwynnie and Chris bought their Belsize Park manse in 2004 from Oscar winning director Sam Mendes and Oscar winning actress Kate Winslet for a reported £2,400,000 and two years ago they picked up the townhouse next door for a reported £3,100,000. According recent reports, a new extension off the side their existing house will contain a gym, changing room, three bedrooms and 1 pooper and the planned combination of the two townhouses will give the luxe living family of four a 33-room Belsize Park residential beast.

Gwynnie and Chris are hardly setting a trend in celebrities combining adjoining London townhouses. Last year celebrity chef Jamie Oliver picked up the house next door to his Primrose Hill home and combined them into one 19-room monster and the children will recall that Gwynnie's bestie Madonna also owns side by side townhouses in Marylebone that she hopes (or already did) combine into one sprawling spread. Of course, now that Madge and Guy are no more, perhaps they should keep (or have kept) the two townhouses separate.

While Chris is surely pulling down piles of pounds making music and touring with Coldplay, Your Mama thinks Gwynnie better scoot her baby-making booty back to work right quick because keeping up with the exorbitant renovation costs, steep taxes and high maintenance on all their posh properties surely costs the couple a vast sum of money each year and Gywnnie doing just one, or maybe two, not very good movies every year doesn't seem like it would go quite far enough in paying all the nannies, chefs, personal assistants, flower arrangers, chauffeurs, woodwork polishers, weed pullers and terlit gurls required to keep their homes and lives running with the efficiency and grace of Patek Phillipe watch.