A life aquatic
Sausalito houseboat for a free spirit makes a big splash after major redo
“It was such a dump, but I stepped in the front door and saw out to the water and I said ‘This is where I’m going to live.’ ” Megan Dixon, on seeing her houseboat for the first time
Megan Dixon had been a city girl her entire life. From San Francisco to Boston to London, a bustling urban scene had always been right outside her front door. But the desire for sunnier skies finally made her consider a move out of the city (not to mention she had previously picked notoriously foggy locales as her home base). But spend five minutes with Dixon and it immediately becomes clear she isn’t a staid, take-off-to-the-suburbs kind of woman.
“A friend suggested I move to Marin, and I told him the only way I would ever do that is if I lived on a houseboat,” says Dixon, an international investigations lawyer who takes advantage of the frequent world travel her job requires to collect art and oddities from across the globe.
The friend called her bluff and arranged for the two of them to check out a houseboat on the market that very day. “It was such a dump, but I stepped in the front door and saw out to the water and I said ‘This is where I’m going to live,’ ” recalls Dixon.
And so Dixon soon found herself the proud owner of a 30-year-old floating home — four ropes were the only things keeping it from bobbing out into the bay. That first year, 2007, was a crash course in houseboat living.
During her first winter on the water, the worst storm in 50 years pounded the docks. The first thing to go was her electricity, and then all her deck furniture was swept into the bay. She watched as other houseboats broke free of their moorings and were cast out to sea; the waters became a stew of possessions gone overboard. Once the storm had passed, Dixon went to step out of her front door only to realize at the last minute that her ramp, the only access to the dock, had blown away.
This was also when she learned about the camaraderie of the houseboat community. Neighbors were constantly roaming the docks, making sure everyone had all the necessities, including a safe place to ride out the storm. It was her neighbors who quickly built her makeshift ramp so she could disembark. “Everyone here completely looks out for one another,” Dixon says. “It’s a really incredible community.”
But Dixon still had her work cut out for her. “I spent the next eight years making the house watertight, basically making it livable,” she says. By 2015 she had earned her sea legs and was ready to make her houseboat, which she had lovingly
named Brown Sugar, into her dream house. The timing was perfect: After the recent pounding, Dixon is happy to report: “My boat fared extremely well and was cozy and safe.”
She partnered with Paige Loczi of Loczi Design, and the two women couldn’t be more on the same wavelength (pun intended). Loczi and her team have mastered melding the vibrant work of local artists and makers with a modern-meets-psychedelic vibe. Plus, their expertise in space planning would come in handy when re-imagining the 1,500-squarefoot, three-story home.
The revamp took seven months, during which Dixon had to take to land and live elsewhere. “There wasn’t room to store construction debris overnight, let alone space for someone to live there,” says Loczi, who implemented a strict regimen of hauling out demo materials each evening before leaving the site, which is reached by a long, winding and narrow dock. “There was no putting a massive waste container in front of the house. Not here.”
Loczi and her team started by eliminating the warren of rooms on the lowest floor, which is about 50 percent below the waterline, and turning it into a spacious master bedroom and bath. Previously musty and chilly, Dixon now enjoys radiant heated floors and a perfectly sea-level view from her bed. “Although more than once a kayaker has paddled right up to my window and looked in at me lying in bed,” she says. “I’ve learned to keep my shades closed, especially on Saturday mornings.”
But even with shades closed, the view is hypnotizing. Wildly patterned Timorous Beasties wallpaper covers one wall, and a deep ledge behind the bed is a mini gallery for art and objects Dixon has collected on her travels. The adjacent master bath features a walk-in shower clad in polished Japanese porcelain mosaic tile. The combination of skylights and an installation of floating vases bursting with green by Crooked Nest, a local landscape firm, gives the bathroom a tropical feel. The real showstopper is the outdoor Japanese soaking tub, tucked off the bedroom in a semi-enclosed, semi-submerged deck.
Upstairs, the main floor is still dominated by the view of the water, which has been expanded and enhanced with a few simple moves. The kitchen sink used to face the front of the house and look out to the docks,
but Loczi relocated it to the other side of the now-open kitchen, so doing dishes now comes with a view of the bay. A new built-in banquette backs the kitchen counter, making the most of Dixon’s extra-long dining table, which doubles as a workspace. The living room is beyond, set with a wildly patterned low-slung Mah Jong sofa from Roche Bobois, a hide rug by AvoAvo and a floating fireplace by Vauni.
Adding new sliding-glass doors, Loczi widened the egress to the deck, which, in lieu of an outdoor rug, features a graphic floor mural by Londubh Studio out of Los Angeles. An outdoor sectional sofa and fire pit-cum-coffee table complete the scene — well, that and the vast expanse of ocean, blue skies and mountains beyond.
The top floor houses the guest room and a third bathroom. Here, Loczi replaced the carpet with cork floors, refinished and re-oiled all the wood and furnished the space with a mix of eclectic antiques and Middle Eastern and Indian textiles. The bathroom gained a new shower stall and some breathing room, and lost a claw-foot tub. But the tub never did get hauled out during the exodus. It was moved to the top-floor deck and filled with greenery and sculpture by the Crooked Nest team. Now a bucolic bathing beauty keeps constant watch over the water at all times, keeping a stoic eye out for storms.