Trailer Park Chic
Pedigreed antiques, lush upholstery fabrics and fine art are Bob Bacon’s passions. So when he recently moved to a Sarasota mobile home park called The Winds of St. Armands, he took his prized possessions with him. “I didn’t want to part with anything, but I’m not a condo person. And I didn’t want to deal with a garden, a swimming pool and huge overhead—I just wanted to power down in a place for me and my dog,” says the owner of Bacon & Wing, a furniture and textiles manufacturing business he built to national prominence with his partner, the late Thomas Wing. Instead, Bacon bought his now majestic mobile home for $15,000 and immediately embarked on a $100,000 remodel, including enclosing the porch for a new total of 1,600 square feet of interior space. “I went for the best—a new kitchen, new bath with a sink from Paris, wood floors, all new walls and five-point crown molding throughout,” he says. “The last thing I wanted was a home that looked like a trailer.”