Living ‘Billionaire Bohemian’

It’s a house with an unexpected story, which, honestly, makes it a perfect match for owners Jeanne Demers and Richard Christiansen, who have quite a story of their own. Before buying their place in Walpole in 2018, they were living in New York, where the pair sparked a whirlwind love story.

While house sitting in the Hamptons, Jeanne was introduced to Richard by friends who met him at the health food store. He’d offered to give them a tour of the magnificent estate where he’d been caretaker for the last 15 years. Jeanne tagged along, perhaps not expecting to meet the man she would call her husband in less than a year. But that’s exactly what happened.

“We blasted off that day; it was fun,” Richard recalls. “As soon as I met Jeanne, she moved in, basically.”

They tied the knot after seven months and lived together for two years in the estate’s lavishly furnished $8 million guesthouse. The owner, artist Dina Recanati, was rarely home, so they had the place mostly to themselves.

But when Recanati decided to sell and relocate to Israel to be near family, the search for a new home was on for Jeanne and Richard. They both had New England roots and wanted to head further northeast, so they watched the real estate market closely, trying to figure out which homes were pending, under contract, or actually available in the fast-moving market.

When they came upon the Walpole home where they now live, they immediately contacted the real estate agent, hopped on a ferry, drove to New Hampshire, and wrote a check then and there.

“It was the only house we looked at,” Richard says.

“It was like it hit all the boxes and the fact that Walpole was such a cool town — we stopped in at Burdick’s and had lunch, and we were like, wow!” Jeanne says.

Despite its charm, the three-bedroom, twobathroom house was a bit of a fixer-upper. For instance, the main doorway had a giant puddle in front of it, and several trees lurched over the home.

But the duo immediately knew it was where they wanted to land. And what they brought with them was wild.

“We got the choice of all the furniture from the two houses where I was working,” Richard notes.

Though the pieces had been offered to Recanati’s family, nobody wanted anything, so it was just going to go.

“They were taking shipping containers full of her artwork and other stuff, so they had all the opportunity to just stick the furniture in, but they didn’t,” Richard says.

Once he and Jeanne were settled in Walpole, he got the chance to connect with Recanati over the phone, and she expressed how nice it was that they had ended up with several remarkable furnishings.

However, blending their new house with the furniture turned out to be a bit more complex than anticipated.

“This is a reproduction house. It looks like it was built a long time ago, but it was actually built in the 1980s, and they repurposed all kinds of old stuff,” Jeanne describes.

Exposed antique beams, wide pine flooring, a slate roof, and four brick fireplaces all give the historic setting authenticity.

The family that originally built the house, the Burroughs, “did things by the numbers,” Jeanne says. “It’s a replica of a Colonial, and so Colonials are 13 by 13 size rooms.”

Each space in the home is based on that math, measuring 13 by 13 or 13 by 26. The Burroughs became known for building these intricate houses throughout the area.

“This was one of the first ones they did,” Richard says, noting that he and Jeanne had the pleasure of meeting the family last summer.

Because of the historically accurate size of each room, the inherited furniture from the estate seemed to overtake the space itself. But, during the pandemic, Jeanne and Richard were patient and brought a few pieces in at a time and experimented.

What they learned was to scale back. For instance, in front of the main fireplace, which now features an inset, custom-made, soapstone woodstove, there are two gorgeous white chairs with mismatched pillows. But the accompanying, down-filled couch lives in the next room.

“It’s a statement piece rather than having a bunch of pieces,” Jeanne notes.

The result is an eclectic home that is upscale, comfortable, yet refined — there’s an immediate sense of style when you enter.

“It’s kind of like billionaire Bohemian,” Jeanne says with a laugh.

Melded with the grandness of the estate pieces is a creative flair that shows up in handcrafted light fixtures from Etsy, splashes of color, and intriguing works of art.

Upstairs, the bedrooms show the same attention to detail, featuring a quilt made in India and an incredible canopy bed (though the finials wouldn’t quite fit beneath the ceiling and had to be omitted). The main bedroom also has a lovely glass door, which the couple added to bring in their furniture. The historic-style staircase was too narrow.

All winter long, they’ve been nestled in, but spring is when the magic will really begin. Richard’s true role during his decades as a caretaker was gardening. It’s a passion for him, and he is artful in his work around the property, with is bordered by an impressive ravine that zig-zags off behind the barn.

While Jeanne is always game to help plant bulbs and pull weeds, the office is where her passion comes out. She is an experienced writer and coach specializing in neuro-linguistic programming and EFT tapping (Emotional Freedom Technique) to resolve long-term patterns that hold people back. In March, she and a colleague, Natalie Glynn, released a new coaching program called The Choose Your Life Method™ after months of recordings and video calls, all based in her little New Hampshire office.

It’s a far cry from the Hamptons, but with zero hesitation, Jeanne says, “It just feels good.”

Happy to have found a home and each other,

by Denise Mazzola