Hansen: Home tour provides peek into authenticity

Some people store the mementos of their lives in shoeboxes, preferring to keep private what they find most meaningful. Others showcase the things they value.

On Sunday, five private Laguna Beach homes were opened for public inspection during the 42nd annual Charm House Tour, sponsored by Village Laguna.

In addition to highlighting different types of historical architecture, including Pyne Castle, the tour is a way to better appreciate the diversity of Laguna’s village character and interior tastes.

For some, it could be a Louis XV console table, a Bill Motta painting or an A.B. Chase parlor grand piano.

Obscure, quirky or valuable, it doesn’t matter. They are the things that mean something and add up to making a home.

“To me it’s more about creating a feeling,” said Michael Boone, new owner of the Fowler House, an English country home built in 1915. In less than a year, Boone has done a masterful job at remodeling and decorating the home.

“It’s highly orchestrated chaos,” he said. “It clearly looks lived in. With the English, it’s all about comfort first. The sofa needs to be understuffed so you sink into it.

“They don’t hide their TV, they don’t hide their magazines. They let things get faded. They want things to be a little worn out. Paintings should be a little crooked.”

Boone’s house, the first on the tour, had perhaps the most dramatic, elegant interior but was also accessible. Despite a Versailles directoire cabinet from 1795 and an English game table from 1780, one felt as if Boone played poker on the table with friends on Saturday night.

“I am not trying to decorate for a magazine cover. This is how I live,” he said. “I collect a bunch of random things. Some are from swap meets. Some are from palaces. And it’s all here. Whatever is pretty, whatever is pleasing.”

Included on the tour is a Locust Street cottage owned by Margaret Brown and built in 1928. It is a quintessential Laguna cottage with a comfortable front courtyard and a landscaped back ravine.

The third house was owned by Jacquie and Bob Moffett. This mid-century-style home was built in the 1960s and had a clean, Scandinavian feel to it with expansive views of the ocean.

The fourth stop on the tour was the castle, which had never been open for a public tour, according to organizers. Despite its well-documented history, Pyne Castle still retains a certain mystic feel, with its size, conical turret and large gardens. The site features 16 apartment units that range from $1,500 to more than $5,000 a month and are always in demand.

One of the units was opened during the tour, and it combined modern and historic features in a very livable, desirable space.

The last house was the Carol and James Hamilton home overlooking the beach above Shaw’s Cove. The craftsman-style bungalow was built in 1919 and included several renovations and expansions.

Each of these homes is very distinct, but all had a common theme: They reflected the owners.

“These are very real houses,” Boone said. “They’re not staged. They’re not for sale. You’re going into a living house. Each house is different.”

This uniqueness should not be surprising but what’s interesting is to see people display their lives so proudly.

For Boone, 52, it started early. He was a young man when he saw a Ralph Lauren ad with a creamy Jaguar car, coiffed models and in the background an English country home. He immediately fell in love.

“It was very elegant living but in a cozy, relaxed way … a gentler, more civilized way of life — a sort of Pasadena lifestyle like I had grown up in,” he said.

Over the years, he experimented with this style, perfecting the “accidental, collected look.”

Five years ago he sold a home in Hollywood that had this same English country motif. During the open house, a man quietly came through and looked at the property. Then two years ago, someone called Boone and said her employer had seen the Hollywood house and wanted Boone to decorate it.

Boone is not a professional interior decorator. He is an entrepreneur and business owner. He just does the designing for fun.

But the person was insistent. Boone finally acquiesced and said he would decorate the man’s house. When he asked who the man was, the answer floored him.

It was Carlos Slim, then the richest man in the world and now second behind Bill Gates.

“So my career as a decorator began with my first client being the richest man in the world,” he said, laughing. “I’m a one-trick pony, but I do this trick really well.”

Hobbies grow into passions. Mementos grow into collections, each with a story.

We curate our lives to fill the spaces we keep, savoring our memories for fear of throwing them away.

And if we do it right, there’s an authenticity to our lives and our home, regardless of size, that can be felt by all who enter.

DAVID HANSEN is a writer and Laguna Beach resident. He can be reached at davidhansen@yahoo.com.