‘It’s Business in Front and a Party in Back’: Welcome to the Mullet House
A Texas couple spent $9 million building a second home in California and named it after the infamous haircut
5 min
Houses in Carmel, Calif., tend to have tongue-in-cheek names, like Cabin-on-the-Rocks and Last Resort. So Marguerite Woung-Chapman and Stan Chapman decided to christen the house they built in this charming seaside community with a name that gives a humorous nod to its contemporary twist on modern architecture.
“We call it Mullet House. It’s business in front and a party in back,” says Chapman, 57, a senior executive at an energy infrastructure company in Houston. The reference, of course, is to the haircut popularised in the 1980s that was short at the front and sides but long in the back.
From the street, the house, a second home for the Texas couple, has an unassuming appearance. The front walls are shielded behind ribbed slats of white painted cedar, almost like a fence. And like a mullet, there is a hint from first glance that something interesting is happening on the other side: A portion of the ribbed slats reveals an entryway’s glass wall that offers a glimpse of the interior and views of the valley beyond.
Inside, the space unfolds into multiple levels, with sweeping views of the beach and mountains seen through glass walls and courtyards.
“People stop when they’re driving or walking down the street to look through our house,” says Woung-Chapman, 57, a former general counsel for an energy company in Houston and currently on several boards. She says she is comfortable being observed and waves if she catches people’s eyes. “They’re usually more embarrassed than I am,” she says.
It was this sense of discreet boldness that drove much of the interior design of the house, says Susan Collins Weir, founding principal of Sausalito-based Studio Collins Weir. She chose furnishings and fixtures that had clean lines but were textured and layered, such as olive-colour leather Poliform chairs with leather-upholstered legs and heavy stitching in a dining room that also has a porcelain art piece on the wall that hangs like a woolly fabric.
“They both have a quiet strength,” Collins Weir says of the couple.
To immerse the $9 million house in its surrounding nature, it was sited as close to the front of the property line as possible instead of in the middle of the lot, as is typical in this Carmel Meadows neighbourhood, says Daniel Piechota, founding principal of San Francisco-based Piechota Architecture, which designed the house. The other three sides were at the setback limit, allowing them to max out the envelope at the perimeter and then carve out courtyards.
The property has a large courtyard in the middle, spanned by an open-air bridge that acts as a patio for dining and lounging, and connects the two sides of the house. Below the bridge is a sunken outdoor conversation pit, with a fire pit in the middle, that opens to a backyard space with a hot tub. Glass walls give the whole house transparency.
On one side of the bridge is the main bedroom and bathroom, leading to a smaller courtyard through a large shower. On the other side is the main living and dining area and the kitchen. Two of the three bedrooms are on the bottom floor, where a media room opens to the garden level with the conversation pit. There is also a workout room and a wine room at one end of that level.
The kitchen has three islands lined up in a row: two stainless steel ones for cooking and prepping food, and a marble one for dining. Reflecting the couple’s love for meat, there is a Dry Ager, a butcher block and a bone saw.
Chapman and Woung-Chapman, who were both married before, met when they were working at the same energy company in Houston. They married in 1999. An acquaintance joked they were “a train wreck waiting to happen” because they were such opposites. She grew up in Kingston, Jamaica; briefly in Queens, N.Y.; and then in Miami, with a father she describes as a socialist. He grew up in Colonia, N.J., in a politically conservative, Catholic family, he says.
Chapman says he loved how Woung-Chapman challenged him intellectually. “Early on, I thought I’d make her see the light, but I’ve learned not to try anymore,” he says.
Woung-Chapman, whose ancestry includes Chinese, German, Indian and African, says she liked how intensely curious Chapman was about her background. Both their parents were surprised by their union, but she jokes that her father’s heavy Jamaican accent warded off fights because it made it hard for Chapman to understand him. She says they give each other grace from having to attend too many family events.
One thing they agree on is where and how they live. After renovating a house in the West University Place neighbourhood in Houston in 2001, they decided it was too small for the four kids, now ages 26 to 30, they share from their previous marriages. So they built a new house in the same neighbourhood in 2008. Chapman describes it as a Contemporary Craftsman: Prairie style (his preference) on the outside and stark white modern (her taste) inside. “It was a perfect blend. A really good compromise,” he says.
When they started thinking of where to retire, their criteria included wanting to build a house by the water and mountains that was within walking distance of stores and restaurants, and was relatively close to an airport. Their list of potential locations included Nashville, Annapolis, the Jersey Shore, Key West and Savannah. It didn’t include California—or anything on the West Coast.
Still, Chapman had fond memories of a trip to Carmel, so in February 2017 they decided to look at houses while on vacation there. “We said we know it won’t happen, but let’s start there and knock it out,” says Woung-Chapman.
She says the moment they entered Carmel Meadows, which has fairly traditional homes—including the one formerly owned by the late actress Betty White that sold for $10.775 million in 2022, well over its $7.95 million asking price—they knew that was where they would end up. They put in an offer immediately on the neighbourhood’s last remaining open lot with an ocean view and bought it in April 2017 for $1.25 million. “We just wanted it,” she says.
This time, Woung-Chapman says, she wanted a design determined by the site. Cameron Helland, a lead architect on the project who now has his own firm, Helland Architecture in San Francisco, says he came up with the idea of the bridge as a way to maximise the views of the ocean while keeping to the 18-foot, county-dictated limit on height. In response to early opposition from some neighbours, who felt that the aesthetic might not fit with the neighbourhood, Helland says he made the front of the house as unimposing as possible so the street presence would more closely tie in with the scale of the neighbouring houses.
The $9 million cost, including the lot, the architect, interior design, landscaping and building, was significantly higher than they expected, says Chapman. He sometimes thinks about what they could have gotten for the same amount at the Jersey Shore or Nashville. And he sometimes feels he should be spending more time there, as he commutes back and forth to Houston and is in Carmel less than six months a year.
But neither Chapman nor Woung-Chapman has any regrets about choosing Carmel. Their new home offers what they wanted in climate, views and the access to outdoors.
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Weary of ‘smart’ everything, Americans are craving stylish ‘analog rooms’ free of digital distractions—and designers are making them a growing trend.
5 min
James and Ellen Patterson are hardly Luddites. But the couple, who both work in tech, made an unexpectedly old-timey decision during the renovation of their 1928 Washington, D.C., home last year.
The Pattersons had planned to use a spacious unfinished basement room to store James’s music equipment, but noticed that their children, all under age 21, kept disappearing down there to entertain themselves for hours without the aid of tablets or TVs.
Inspired, the duo brought a new directive to their design team.
The subterranean space would become an “analog room”: a studiously screen-free zone where the family could play board games together, practice instruments, listen to records or just lounge about lazily, undistracted by devices.
For decades, we’ve celebrated the rise of the “smart home”—knobless, switchless, effortless and entirely orchestrated via apps.
But evidence suggests that screen-free “dumb” spaces might be poised for a comeback.
Many smart-home features are losing their luster as they raise concerns about surveillance and, frankly, just don’t function.
New York designer Christine Gachot said she’d never have to work again “if I had a dollar for every time I had a client tell me ‘my smart music system keeps dropping off’ or ‘I can’t log in.’ ”
Google searches for “how to reduce screen time” reached an all-time high in 2025. In the past four years on TikTok, videos tagged #AnalogLife—cataloging users’ embrace of old technology, physical media and low-tech lifestyles—received over 76 million views.
And last month, Architectural Digest reported on nostalgia for old-school tech : “landline in hand, cord twirled around finger.”
Catherine Price, author of “ How to Break Up With Your Phone,” calls the trend heartening.
“People are waking up to the idea that screens are getting in the way of real life interactions and taking steps through design choices to create an alternative, places where people can be fully present,” said Price, whose new book “ The Amazing Generation ,” co-written with Jonathan Haidt, counsels tweens and kids on fun ways to escape screens.
From both a user and design perspective, the Pattersons consider their analog room a success.
Freed from the need to accommodate an oversize television or stuff walls with miles of wiring, their design team—BarnesVanze Architects and designer Colman Riddell—could get more creative, dividing the space into discrete music and game zones.
Ellen’s octogenarian parents, who live nearby, often swing by for a round or two of the Stock Market Game, an eBay-sourced relic from Ellen’s childhood that requires calculations with pen and paper.
In the music area, James’s collection of retro Fender and Gibson guitars adorn walls slicked with Farrow & Ball’s Card Room Green , while the ceiling is papered with a pattern that mimics the organic texture of vintage Fender tweed.
A trio of collectible amps cluster behind a standing mic—forming a de facto stage where family and friends perform on karaoke nights. Built-in cabinets display a Rega turntable and the couple’s vinyl record collection.
“Playing a game with family or doing your own little impromptu karaoke is just so much more joyful than getting on your phone and scrolling for 45 minutes,” said James.
Screen-Free ‘Escapes’
“Dumb” design will likely continue to gather steam, said Hans Lorei, a designer in Nashville, Tenn., as people increasingly treat their homes “less as spaces to optimise and more as spaces to retreat.”
Case in point: The top-floor nook that designer Jeanne Hayes of Camden Grace Interiors carved out in her Connecticut home as an “offline-office” space.
Her desk? A periwinkle beanbag chair paired with an ottoman by Jaxx. “I hunker down here when I need to escape distractions from the outside world,” she explained.
“Sometimes I’m scheming designs for a project while listening to vinyl, other times I’m reading the newspaper in solitude. When I’m in here without screens, I feel more peaceful and more productive at the same time—two things that rarely go hand in hand.”
A subtle archway marks the transition into designer Zoë Feldman’s Washington, D.C., rosy sunroom—a serene space she conceived as a respite from the digital demands of everyday life.
Used for reading and quiet conversation, it “reinforces how restorative it can be to be physically present in a room without constant input,” the designer said.
Laura Lubin, owner of Nashville-based Ellerslie Interiors, transformed a tiny guest bedroom in her family’s cottage into her own “wellness room,” where she retreats for sound baths, massages and reflection.
“Without screens, the room immediately shifts your nervous system. You’re not multitasking or consuming, you’re just present,” said Lubin.
As a designer, she’s fielding requests from clients for similar spaces that support mental health and rest, she said.
“People are overstimulated and overscheduled,” she explained. “Homes are no longer just places to live—they’re expected to actively support well-being.”
Designer Molly Torres Portnof of New York’s DATE Interiors adopted the same brief when she designed a music room for her husband, owner of the labels Greenway Records and Levitation, in their Lido Beach, N.Y. home. He goes there nightly to listen to records or play his guitar.
The game closet from the townhouse in “The Royal Tenenbaums”? That idea is back too, says Gachot. Last year she designed an epic game room backed by a rock climbing wall for a young family in Montana.
When you’re watching a show or on your phone, “it’s a solo experience for the most part,” the designer said. “The family really wanted to encourage everybody to do things together.”
Analog Accessories
Don’t have the space—or the budget—to kit out an entire retro rec room?
“There are a lot of small tweaks you can make even if you don’t have the time, energy or budget to design a fully analog room from scratch,” said Price.
Gachot says “the small things in people’s lives are cues of what the bigger trends are.”
More of her clients, she’s noticed, have been requesting retrograde staples, such as analog clocks and magazine racks.
For her Los Angeles living room, chef Sara Kramer sourced a vintage piano from Craigslist to be the room’s centerpiece, rather than sacrifice its design to the dominant black box of a smart TV. Alabama designer Lauren Conner recently worked with a client who bought a home with a rotary phone.
Rather than rip it out, she decided to keep it up and running, adding a silver receiver cover embellished with her grandmother’s initials.
Some throwback accessories aren’t so subtle. Melia Marden was browsing listings from the Public Sale Auction House in Hudson, N.Y. when she spotted a phone booth from Bell Systems circa the late 1950s and successfully bid on it for a few hundred dollars.
“It was a pandemic impulse buy,” said Marden.
In 2023, she and her husband, Frank Sisti Jr., began working with designer Elliot Meier and contractor ReidBuild to integrate the booth into what had been a hallway linen closet in their Brooklyn townhouse.
Canadian supplier Old Phone Works refurbished the phone and sold them the pulse-to-tone converter that translates the rotary dial to a modern phone line.
The couple had collected a vintage whimsical animal-adorned wallpaper (featured in a different colourway in “Pee-wee’s Playhouse”) and had just enough to cover the phone booth’s interior.
Their children, ages 9 and 11, don’t have their own phones, so use the booth to communicate with family. It’s also become a favorite spot for hiding away with a stack of Archie comic books.
The booth has brought back memories of meandering calls from Marden’s own youth—along with some of that era’s simple joy. As Meier puts it: “It’s got this magical wardrobe kind of feeling.”
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