The phrase dream home may be thrown about quite liberally, but in Tan France’s case, there is no more apt description for his Salt Lake City house. France, and his husband, artist Rob France, had scouted its neighborhood for seven years, fantasizing about the day when they’d be financially secure enough to own a home there. There was one street, and one home in particular, to which Tan France was drawn: “I always told my husband, ‘I'm going to give you this house one day,’” he recalls. “‘And I’m going to give you a life you could never have imagined.’” The area was known, however, for homes that were passed from generation to generation, with real estate hardly ever entering the market. “And so, I thought that maybe 20, 30, or 40 years [from now], hopefully, it will happen,” he says.
But fortune favors the bold, or in this case, those who canvass the neighborhood every two or three weeks. Seven years after first falling in love with the home, it landed on the market, and fortuitously, it was just a few weeks after France had begun filming the career-changing first season of Queer Eye. France called a real-estate agent friend of the couple’s and urged him to make an offer. “‘And he said, ‘You haven’t even seen inside,’” France says of the conversation. “I told him, ‘I don’t care. It’s my house.’’ Even a FaceTime with Rob decrying the interiors as “terrible” didn’t deter him: “I had such a strong vision for it,” France says. “I said, ‘As long as it’s structurally sound, I’m going to turn it into our dream home.’”
The couple purchased the house in the spring of 2017 and spent a full year on a gut renovation, which included updating the plumbing and rewiring the electricity. For France, who had never done a remodel of any kind, and was mostly away while filming, it was a true trial by fire. “I’d never worked with a contractor in my life. I didn’t even know that that’s what they were called,” he says, laughing. “This was a major, excellent learning experience for me.”
The finished project is a 3,000-square-foot home in a style that France dubs “modern-classic.” He wanted to preserve the integrity of the 1906 property, while updating it for life in 2020. The master bedroom, for example, had original molding that the couple wanted to keep, but structural updates to the house dictated that it be removed. “We took so many photos to make sure that we could redo it the exact same way,” he says. They also opted to paint the ceiling white to help the molding design pop even more. The living room received a similar treatment, with a dated popcorn ceiling smoothed out but the original sconces rewired and left intact.
The main floor of the home is designed in what France likens to an English cottage–style layout, where archways without doors delineate one room from the next. For France, who loves to entertain when he’s home, it’s ideal for large gatherings; as is the sunny dining room, whose table can seat 10. France, an accomplished cook, whips up meals in the home’s sleek kitchen, which is painted in Behr’s Falcon Gray. “I make a lot of Indian food and I bake constantly. I like to think I make the best éclair a person will ever have,” he says.
Indeed, the couple’s interests are on display all over the home. Many of the objets decorating the common spaces are ones picked up while France was filming. “My husband travels with me maybe 50% of the time and we hit up as many vintage stores as possible to hopefully just stumble upon a knickknack that might work somewhere in the house,” he says. During the renovation, they were particularly on the hunt for doorknobs. While most of the originals were still in the home when they purchased it, they sourced replacements for those that had been lost while the couple was on the road.
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And, of course, France’s closet—which is really a whole floor of the house—is jaw-dropping. The attic room has space for everything from his white sneaker collection to all of his color-coded shirts. It is, however, still not quite big enough for his whole wardrobe. The couple is in the process now of turning the basement into France’s secondary closet. “I’m determined to make that one of the most beautiful closets you'll ever see,” he says. One of the most luxurious touches? France plans to put a bed in the center of the room, so he can sleep, occasionally, among all his finest pieces.
It’s clear that France has a talent for design and he doesn’t rule out exploring his passion more fully in the future. “Who knows, maybe I’ll have a career in interior design in a few years. I’ll leave fashion behind,” he says with a laugh.
