Bonnie McIlvaine has lived in three homes in San Diego County, all in the same location.
The first was an unheated concrete block house that she bought in 1973 for $32,000. Ms. McIlvaine, a recently divorced teacher, wanted a break from city life. She was in a small, hilly town of undeveloped brush and forest, not far from the coastal town of Carlsbad, California, where she worked.
As she lovingly cast her gaze at the dated little building—or, more specifically, the half-acre it sat on—her real estate agent said, “We can do a lot better; We’ll look at tract homes.”
But all Ms. McIlvaine could think about was that she had always wanted a horse, and maybe that could happen here.
In 2001, the year she retired from teaching, she invited her mother to live with her. The women pooled their money and replaced the concrete house with a two-bedroom bungalow with a pitched roof and central heating.
Today, this building is something completely different: a place where Marie Antoinette would have liked to take off her slippers and sit on a chaise longue.
In 2007, Ms. McIlvaine, now 80, inherited a fortune from Hubert de Monmonier, a neighbor she had met decades earlier on a horse and with whom she had developed a deep, platonic friendship.
“My father was killed in World War II,” she said. “I haven’t had such a tight, comfortable male counterpart.”
Mr. de Monmonier, who was 23 years older, shared her love of literature, gardening and animals. “We just got along well,” she said. And one day he told her that he planned to set up a foundation for her since there were no close family members present.
Mr. de Monmonier had been a groundskeeper and locksmith for the Los Angeles Unified School District, but made his money through a shrewd real estate investment and subsequent successful stock trading. (As a rockhound, he also collected nearly 900 geological specimens, which he donated to the Gem and Mineral Museum at the University of Arizona.)
Ms. McIlvaine used her inheritance to finance the college education of two of his Mexican garden assistants. But she also pursued a dream that had matured during summer trips to the Cotswolds in England and the Palace of Versailles in France: She reinvented her 1,500-square-foot bungalow as a place of weathered stone and vintage wood, with crystal chandeliers hanging from raised ceilings and filled it with antique furniture.
Tiffani Baumgart, the interior designer and Ms. McIlvaine's partner in the remodel, described the intensely embellished tiny home as a “micro-Versailles.”
Ms. Baumgart arrived on the scene after the bungalow was gutted and its interior was being remodeled – after Ms. McIlvane's mother died in 2009, the second bedroom was converted into a garden room – and promoted the theme of baroque luxury for more than three years every square centimeter.
She commissioned wood carvers to execute her furniture sketches in the Rococo style. She organized the production of customized marble floor tiles. She worked with Ken Wildes, a plaster artist from Newport, Rhode Island, to install 250 handmade roses on the living room and bedroom ceilings. She oversaw the murals by Jennifer Chapman, a local artist.
“Jennifer was in the house for years,” recalls Ms. Baumgart, 61. As the artist went from room to room, painting birds and butterflies, clouds of flowers and pink cumulus clouds in the cerulean sky, she fell into a Fragonard-like groove. When Ms. McIlvaine and Ms. Baumgart failed to find an antique small grand piano that would fit in the living room, Ms. Chapman painted a newly purchased Steinway with gold valances and scenes of rural ruins.
Even rare purchases received a personal stamp. Much of the 18th century furniture found at dealers or through online searches was found in the form of velvet, silk, or Fortuny prints. Ms. Baumgart cut off a pair of bulky candelabra and fashioned them into the matching pendants that now hang over the kitchen island, and hired metal workers to turn iron into stands to support antique stone basins in the powder room and laundry room. A carved plaque she found at an antique store became the centerpiece of a bedroom closet.
At other times the environment was modified to accommodate beloved purchases, When an arched niche was carved into the living room's molding to accommodate the knobby top of an Italian gilded mirror. The arch inspired the curved doorway on the other side of the room.
The house was effectively completed in 2012, but Ms. Baumgart continues to play around with it; She recently added custom outdoor curtains to a secret garden area.
Was there ever a point where her customer gave up on an idea or purchase because it cost too much, she was asked?
Never, said the designer.
Which raised the thorny question of the budget.
“I got all my bills and put them in a folder,” Ms. McIlvaine said. “And I thought, 'One day I'm just going to add it all up.' And then I threw it all away.”
She added: “My estimate would be a few million.”
It is likely that anyone familiar with the prices of custom plasterwork and original Louis furniture would suspect that this estimate was low. But the most burning question was why, given her windfall, Ms McIlvaine chose to invest so much in a modest bungalow.
“People said, 'This neighborhood isn't very upscale.' “If you're going to spend that much money, you should move to Rancho Santa Fe,” Ms. McIlvaine said, referring to an affluent housing development near Carlsbad.
But she never wanted to give up the property that stole her heart more than 50 years ago, she said. Although the horse she owned is now a treasured memory, she has features a pair of dogs, a pair of koi ponds and a waterfall fed by a recirculating irrigation system.
“Have you ever heard of people winning the lottery and then suddenly running out of money and not knowing where it went?” she asked. “It's something like that. So I cool my jets. I don't spend any more money. I already have my little paradise.”
Living Small is a bi-weekly column that explores what it takes to live a simpler, more sustainable, or more compact life.
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