One couple's second childhood blossoms on a country estate in Folsom
by Denise Trowbridge, At Home in New Orleans, June 2003
The entrance to Margie and Jim Valliant's country home is marked only by an inconspicuous wooden sign near a winding gravel road. At the end of that humble entry way, flanked by dogwoods, holly ferns and azaleas, stands Rainwood, a West Indies colonial-style home modeled after Laura Plantation in Vacherie. "I never dreamed I would love it so much out here," Margie, a San Francisco native, says. "It's really another way of life. It's like we're living our second childhood."
Several years ago, the Valliants decided to leave their home in Mandeville to live on the 40-acre estate in Folsom that has been part of Jim's family for three generations. Margie drew up plans for the house after a visit to Laura Plantation. "I knew that I wanted a Louisiana house," Margie says, "but I didn't know what style. Laura was a humble working farm, and I just loved it. I wanted my house to be just like it."
With the help of architect Arthur Middleton and builder Buddy Weaver of Balanced Builders, Margie and Jim's dreams took shape. French doors open onto a porch that hugs three sides of the house, lending easy access to the outdoors for entertaining and a view of the deer that come by to nibble on the field peas planted out back. The kitchen is a spacious work-and-play area featuring antique-cypress ceiling beams recovered from a Georgia sugar mill, custom cabinetry and a fireplace molded from jumbo Georgia soft bricks. Recycled heart-pine floors add elegance and warmth to the rest of the graciously outfitted residence.
Jim collects tractors and goes fishing in the ponds that his grandfather dug by hand in the 1930s, while Margie spends relaxed hours tending the cucumbers and yellow squash that grow in her vegetable garden. She also puts the years of interior-design experience she gained with her company, Rainwood Interiors, to work in the sunny rooms of their exceptional home. From the Carrera marble counters in the kitchen to the trumeau in the dining room, Margie's handiwork is everywhere. She sewed the home's silk draperies by hand and spent months customizing the perfect lemony hue for the interior and exterior walls. "I used the garage as my paint tester," she says with a laugh. "For a while, it was covered in yellow stripes."
She personally refinished nearly every piece of furniture and chandelier throughout, too. "I find the style that I want," she says of her impressive do-it-yourself projects, "then I fix it." But country living in Louisiana encompasses more than just a beautiful home. It means finding little green frogs nestled behind your French doors every morning and spotting wild turkeys, blue herons and egrets near the pond, as well as shooing away the stray cows and pigs that wander in from next door. As Margie says, "That's the fun of living in a place like this."
When Margie moved to south Louisiana as a newlywed 36 years ago, she never dreamed that people could live like she does now. "In San Francisco, everyone has a tiny postage-stamp of land," she says. But in Folsom, she's found a lifestyle—of entertaining, gardening and refuge—that suits her and her husband. "I never dreamed I would have this much space," she says. "It's like living in a park." *
