Driven To Design

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. Having built everything from public housing to palaces — he spent decades in Europe and the Middle East, designing for the sultan of Oman and even having a hand in the city planning of Dubai, and at one point in his career having four kings as clients — Adels had returned to America, sold his architecture firm and turned his attention to perhaps his most treasured category of work projects: private homes.

Harmon and her husband, Washington, D.C., attorney Timothy Muris, had purchased a piece of property on the Potomac River that needed a second chance, and Adels was the man for the job. Their meeting was a fateful one; they’ve been teaming up ever since that initial 2004 encounter. Today, “he completes my sentences,” Harmon says. “If I give him an idea, 24 hours later he comes back to me with some amazingly beautiful design that he’s done. He’s just that brilliant.” The home being spotlighted here, currently for sale by Daley and Company Real Estate, was their fourth project together, and they’re already on to a fifth.

Although Harmon and Muris still summer in Washington, D.C., and their Maryland home on the Potomac, Harmon was ready to flee the cold and migrate south for winters upon retiring from her career as a financial planner. “We worked our way down the Florida coast: first Amelia Island, then St. Augustine, then Vero. I believe we fell in love because of the weather and the fact that we had a whole new set of friends in about three months.”

The couple moved to Vero Beach in 2010, and though she nurtured her proclivity for design with a few different homes, she was soon itching to begin another project with Adels. “One of my big loves is building houses,” she shares. “For me, the journey is as much fun as the destination. I love every part of building a house.” They had never lived on the beach, and an idea began to form in Harmon’s mind. As Adels reveals, “She said to her husband while they were walking the dogs one day, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice, dear, if we had our own beach to walk the dogs on?’ And Tim said, ‘It would be lovely, Pam. I think you should suggest it to your next husband.’ That was sort of the family laugh.”