Marcia Sherrill
And Finally
Second homes used to be bastions of bad design, but no more. By land and by water, homeowners have embarked upon a shock-and-awe campaign to bring chintz and glitz to the coast - and beyond.
BY
Marcia Sherrill
PHOTOGRAPHY
Steve Pomberg

Second homes used to be bastions of bad design, but no more. By land and by water, homeowners have embarked upon a shock-and-awe campaign to bring chintz and glitz to the coast - and beyond. Says Marcia, "we've come a long way, baby!"

Growing up in Birmingham, there were second homes aplenty (at least in my 42 first-cousins-on-one-side). There was the beach house - a raft-like shack scrunched up against the sea oats and sand dunes in downtown Panama City Beach. Yes, the  old Land o' Putt Putt. And we had the furniture to match: aunts, uncles, assorted cousins and their jail-bait buddies sprawled across the ancient cast-off Chesterfield (a beachy piece of furniture if ever there was one), sliding around in an oil slick of Coppertone. Dinner was at someone's Formica-topped, duct-taped breakfast table with someone's cook brought in to prepare the tasty hush puppies.

A 'three-hour tour' out on the water could easily make a turn for the worst. For those sea-bound, there was the bass boat used for deep-sea fishing - a maritime no-no complete with actual performance of medical procedures. The favorite? Hypodermics full of anti-nausea medicine at the ready for the weak of stomach. And yet we survived - somehow.

For the quick get-away, there was the family lakehouse: a nightmarish Quonset hut ringed by loose-hinged screen doors and equipped with several generations of dreary Victorian furniture, fish mounts, and - Lord help us! - the tree stump-turned-coffee table. The dock lurched dangerously near the murky and carcinogenic waters and all outdoor furniture - a pastiche of splintery bamboo relics and webbed chrome lounge chairs - was an accident waiting to happen.

The times, they are a-changing. Atlanta, like most land-locked cities, has turned to the second home with near evangelic zeal - it's not just the traditional camp at Lake Lanier, despite the fact that the waterfront boasts a host of Saddam-like palaces. We don't need a U.N. weapons-inspection team; we have an army of decorators circling the lake on search-and-destroy missions involving any unnecessary cottage kitsch. Early reports claim that all cabins have been emptied of the old Paul Bunyan knotty pine bedroom suites.

Nope, Atlantans have been hit by wanderlust. First, in the '80s it was Seaside, a design Disneyland that quickly became a mecca for talented Atlanta interior designers. Seaside made the coast chic. "The homes I have designed there are not stuffed with basement leftovers, nor are they trite beach-motif cliches," avers designer Bill Stewart. "The styles have ranged from South Carolinian low country to Mykonos modern." What? On the beach? It's a revolution in thinking about second homes.

Bobby McDaniels of Boca Bargoons says, "It's not all beach fabrics anymore, chintz with dancing dolphins. Designers are using unexpectedly luxurious fabrics like chenille, silk and velvet - fabrics you would never have found even 10 years ago. These homes are over-the-top."

And why not? Atlantans need their second homes. It's not like Manhattan, where the second home is in the Hamptons (big whoop!), a Park Avenue with sand. Places like Aspen, Crested Butte and Palm Springs are seeing the modern equivalent of a Mongol horde descending on those fair cities. Designer Laura Beam jettisoned her Southern mindset for a recent project in Santa Rosa, California, and likens it to 'a revolution' in the thinking about being Southern. "With your second home you can be free to explore native aesthetics," says Beam. "We did Getty-esque landscaping, and the pool is Crazy California Cool/Vineyard Chic."

Having begun with 'beach creep,' whereby Atlantans annexed Myrtle Beach, St. Simons and Hilton Head, we moved on to the nearby mountains. First, Highlands and then Cashiers. Now we're filling in the middle. Whatever Sherman destroyed, we're taking back, as Atlanta's perimeter is no longer I-285 but a corridor that includes the Rockies and most of the eastern Seaboard.

And we like our amenities. In fact, David York of Barking Hound Village recently opened a dog-friendly rental cottage in Cashiers that lets pets rest from their exhausting Atlanta schedules. After all, even city pets need a break.