This California Home Is an Antique Lover's Dream
And yes, a toddler lives there.
BY HADLEY KELLER PUBLISHED: JUN 14, 2019
When designer Sean Leffers had a baby on the way, he knew it was time to make a change in his vacation home: "I was living in Mammoth at the time, so I didn’t think I wanted to be caught in ice storms with a brand new baby," he recalls. "Also, the house there was like a minimalist child death trap with open staircases and concrete and glass everywhere.
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It's a familiar struggle. But, if you assumed Leffers gave up the sharp corners and sleek metals in favor of baby-proofed tables and wall-to-wall carpeting, you'd be sorely mistaken. Instead, he made over a Hacienda-style home, transforming it from what he describes as "Olive Garden Chic" into an antique lover's haven—where his young son feels more than at home.
"I really was craving something that had character and a sense of time that makes me think about family, life in general," Leffers says of his search for the house. When he visited this one he wasn't deterred by the sloppy plaster job and bad, cheesy art that was there before him. He knew good bones when he saw them—and these were the perfect backdrop for a style of home in line with Leffers's eclectic style.
Tour Sean Leffers's Rancho Santa Fe Home
"I love California Casa architectural vernacular because it accepts anything and everything," he explains. "It’s the ultimate eclectic architecture on the west coast—you can incorporate a lot of things into it."
To make the home feel more in keeping with the 1920s-era ones around it in Rancho Santa Fe, Leffers had added beams and swathed the house in Sherwin Williams's Greek Villa—which he calls the "perfect paint for stucco."
With that as a base, he looked to the interiors. "I wanted to add a dosage of Ralph Lauren WASPiness to accommodate my decorative arts obsession, and then surf shack to keep it casual and cool," the designer explains.
The designer mixed 10 different paints to get the precise shade of sage green on the exterior doors.
Darren Edwards
Using that as a connecting theme, Leffers incorporated furniture that speaks to his preferred style of shopping: by accident. "I love going to antique fairs and shops, vintage stores, junk shops—literally anywhere a high degree of happenstance is involved," he explains. "I love the mixes you end up with when it’s just, 'I’m going to go get coffee and see what happens.'"
Of course "what happens" for a designer with a great eye may be different from the experience of any shopper, but Leffers' mix is nothing if not varied. The home boasts what he calls a "robust mixture" of "mid-century Italian furniture, Asian, European, andAmerican antiques, contemporary art, African tribal art, antique textiles, and a couple hundred yards of Ralph Lauren fabric."
"Doors are always open, it’s really indoor-outdoor roaming around," Leffers says of life at the house.
Darren Edwards
"I really like to buy old things when possible, whether it’s antique or vintage, just something that someone has bought before me," the designer says. "It’s really environmentally friendly, and it’s economic." Plus, he says, "I love finding an old chair that has horrible upholstery and getting to select your favorite fabric in the world and the end product is a chair that no chance that anyone else in the world has. It’s a really special feeling."
And how, pray tell, is life with in this antique-heavy home with the toddler who set this whole process into motion? Great, says Leffers. His advice to antique lover parents nervous about the wrath of youngsters? "Just relax: Life is life. And kids are smart. If you have a few conversations with them about how to treat certain things, they get it."
Oh, and "Scotch-Guard everything."
Hadley Keller Digital Director