Home & Design

The classic wingback chair is going strong, sometimes with surprising modifications

In late 2017, Valerie Grassano was on the hunt for a new place to call home in Vero Beach. She found an ideal build opportunity on a vacant lot in The Anchor at The Moorings. Her new home exudes peace and harmony. Calming shades of blue and teal, inspired by the colors of the pool and surrounding water, gently play off white walls and wide-plank white oak floors, stained a deep mahogany. “It was meant to be,” says Grassano, reflecting on a moonlit night shortly after their move. “We were having dinner outside when we heard swishing sounds. The dolphins … were welcoming us home.”

“George runs this store better than I ever did and has better ideas,” says Gail Williams. Her son disputes this characterization, however. “My mother built a very successful business, and what I am doing is building on that success.” George knows the value of following a winning formula, and that is a primary focus today because, after all, his mother has been in the furniture business in Vero Beach for 40 years.

When Melissa and David Bowser decided to renovate the John's Island condo that had belonged to Melissa's parents, they handed over the keys to a team of carefully chosen professionals, crossed their fingers and waved goodbye. It really came down to the trust factor.

Robert Horne and Dottie Emmons Horne met later in life, but they are making their years together count. Nowhere is this more evident than in the vibrant Vero Beach home they designed and built together.

When women band together, they’re unstoppable — and with seven local women-owned-and-operated stores joining forces grassroots-style to launch a neighborhood, this time they’re out to change the face of the city.

Noreen knew what she envisioned would become a reality when the time was right.

Michael and Sandy Mandel moved to Vero Beach entirely by accident — though it turned out to be a fortuitous one.

“I went along with Dennis, not thinking it would turn out to be anything we would seriously consider,” she muses. “Neither one of us had ever been to Vero Beach, so we had no idea what it was like.”

“We found the plan, the architecture — really the whole thing — intriguing, but this was long before we were even thinking of buying a house in Florida,” Lisa Segalas shares. “However, what we saw in the pictures sent to us stuck in our minds for a couple of decades.”

The story of one cheery yellow Vero Beach residence really begins a thousand miles away and 15 years ago, when homeowner Pamela Harmon was introduced to world-renowned architect Errol M. Adels.

The home — built in the Georgian Revival style, the roots of which date back to a look popular in the 18th and 19th centuries — originally sported interior appointments that bent toward the traditional, and understandably so.

Unlike the majority of Windsor’s two-story residences that reflect the private community’s signature Anglo-Caribbean architecture, the Evanses’ single-story home bears a distinctive Latin American flavor.

“I started the company out of my house,” recalls Visual Comfort CEO Andy Singer, who had been a manufacturer’s rep in college and after graduation.

If ever there was a perfect time of the year for Marion de Vogel to introduce her husband, Willem, to Vero Beach, it was in March, the beginning of “mud season” up North — a time when frost comes out of the ground, snow starts melting and spring rains combine to create a mucky mess.

Life is good for the enthusiastic gardener and energetic business owner whose three-bedroom home and two-bedroom guest cottage are a reflection of the delight she finds in giving her designing impulse free reign

The sold-out event, which benefitted educational programs and attracted new members, was such a success that a second “Fashion Meets Art” is scheduled to take place Feb. 27, with well-known American potter, designer and author Jonathan Adler taking center stage.

When Janet’s parents passed away, the house they had built in 1985 became hers — no strings attached. They had made it clear their daughter and her husband could do whatever they wanted: They could renovate, sell, or tear it down and rebuild; it was up to them.

Ann Wells has long been a fan of the Florida lifestyle. So much so that for the past several years the chairman and CEO of Commonwealth Bank and Trust in Louisville, Kentucky, has owned a pied-a-terre in the Sunshine State where she and her family can get away, relax and spend time together.

That was the dream of a couple and their three young sons — to live near the waves they all love to ride on their surfboards — hoping one day it would become a reality.