Todd Fletcher decorated his Broadmoor home for Christmas with trees, lights and artwork, and hung a ‘Happy Holidays’ sign on the front door. Then he forgot it.
After the holidays passed, the sign remained there, welcoming visitors for weeks, months, and years, although the other ornaments were put into storage. Now a permanent fixture, it captures the essence of Fletcher’s joie de vivre and showcases what lives in his home.
The view from the front door shows the house in holiday dress.
“It feels good,” said Fletcher. “This house is nothing but happiness.”
Whether wearing Rocketman-style orange glasses or an academic black frame, Fletcher creates that vibe with the power of his own energy.
Vigor starts at the door with a laissez les bons temps sign and a “You look good” welcome mat.
Every wall of Fletcher’s house, now called the Holiday House, is a gallery, and every corner is a gathering place.
The lobby is decorated with a Christmas tree.
Sea blue paint provides a backdrop for dozens of aquatic imagery, from sea fish to mud bugs. Crab, redfish, and shrimp are all celebrated in what Fletcher describes as “seafood.”
Dazzling orange and red accents add heat with comfy throws, ceramic vases, picture frames and table settings.
“I’ve always liked red,” said the red-haired Fletcher. who needs to listen to mama ”
The blue and orange color scheme is also evident in the living room, which also showcases Fletcher’s “more is more” home decor trend.
Bold colors are a recent addition. He decided he needed to make changes and recently remodeled part of the house, demolishing the backyard to make way for a low-maintenance patio garden with numerous seating arrangements.
The patio has a vintage French fountain, a decked koi pond, a $20,000 privacy fence, and a covered space with pull-down sheets to create a greenhouse in winter.
At night, lanterns light up, string lights twinkle, and chimes echo, creating a temple-like atmosphere.
The guest bedroom is down the stairs in the foyer.
An avid gardener and plant collector, Fletcher gave up the colorful annuals and tender perennials that once grew in his garden beds and replaced them with hardy perennials such as ferns and holly.
With prime times in mind, he covered most of the soil with porcelain tiles and limited outdoor plants to containers.
“I’m done weeding,” he said.
This year marks the second time that Fletcher has made major changes to the Center Hall building, which was built in the late 19th century. When he bought it in his 1996 it was in disrepair and contained 28 doors.
Todd Fletcher and friend Colleen Grogan
“It was the falling part of the s***,” he said. “The ceiling fan caught fire when I turned it on.”
He took it to a stud, replaced the unwanted door with a wall, and added a closet and master suite in the attic. , is a 3 bathroom house. He calls the additional balcony the “Papal balcony”.
A regal maximalist, Fletcher has mastered the art of organizing large numbers of different objects and finding new uses for them. Expensive contemporary paintings in art galleries are shadowed by rustic folk artists, marble glass vessels, generic seashell frame collections and old key-filled shadows he shares space with his box.
The master bedroom shows off Fletcher’s flair for art and color.
A digitally cataloged collection of 194 indoor plants (mostly succulents) inhabits nearly every room. He scours his vast collection of ties and makes bed quilts, glass closet door shades, and macramé his strips of pillowcases.
Much of his collection, he said, began in adolescence, as his mother encouraged the practice. She once gave him a collection of rulers.
Fletcher keeps most of his hat collection in the Center Hall. There are 43 hats hanging near the ceiling. He keeps a long stick near the front door to drop them off.
In the guest room, Fletcher created wall-sized artwork made out of ties and tie curtains covering the closet windows.
Camouflage caps and light raffia fedoras share a room with crystal chandeliers and platters painted in the style of Clementine Hunters.
“Like most things, I go a little overboard,” he said. “When I’m into something, I go for it.”
In his view, it’s the art that matters, not the design. His style is “whatever you like” and doesn’t use focal points to unify a room. “You respect space,” he said. “You feel it.”
The dining area combines blue with bright orange accents.
Fletcher enjoys entertainment. There are a dozen different seating arrangements, which he calls “stations.” He says you can always let them know of a “station” change whenever guests gather. When they do, everyone follows next place.
Stations begin on the screened-in front porch and flow into the living room with leather sofas, cushioned chairs, martini table, and a dining table that is always set.
At Jazz Station, paintings of greats like Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong dominate the walls. Face-to-face banquettes allow you to listen to their music through speakers throughout the house and pretend the sound is live in real time.
There is another screened pouch in the back. Fletcher’s own favorite station, with a few more stations upstairs and a few outside.
A screened porch on the second floor overlooks the backyard patio.
A favorite spot is the Art Deco cabinet that houses the gin collection. Dry, Botanical, Flora and Fletcher from London has it all. He mixes his gin cocktails in vintage glassware displayed near his maker of deco-era absinthe drinks.
Sharing moments with Hemingway, Stein and Fitzgerald in Paris, amid the cocktailwear wonders of the Jazz Age, as the smell of gin tickles the nose and ice clicks on old glass. can be easily imagined.
But life isn’t all about party time for Fletcher. There is another room in the house, painted in serious taupe, where he lives alone. My office is from 9:00 to 5:00, and I want to change the world. Includes 3 oversized monitors and a laptop.
As a supervisor for Louisiana Healthcare Connections, headquartered in Baton Rouge, I manage staff working with Medicare providers. He spends hours on the phone calming concerned medical professionals.