TRUE LOVE

By Jennifer Drawbridge

During our interview, Laura Love, the owner of this serene Observatory Park home, discovered a large wad of chewing gum stuck on the nose of a garden statue. “Typical,” she laughed. You wouldn’t know it from looking at the effortlessly elegant 5,000-plus-square-foot house, but it is home to Love, her three kids (ages 16, 8 and 6), and a young and peppy dog. How can the place possibly look so pristine? “Well, we do have a no-food-on-the-couches rule. Although the boys don’t always follow it.”

Love, founder of GroundFloor Media, a PR firm, and co-founder of CenterTable, a website design and development company, built her house with real life in mind. She wanted to create a home for herself and her kids that would also accommodate business and nonprofit events and entertaining. “I grew up in Oklahoma and went to school in Nashville. That Southern hospitality was central to my vision from the start. I wanted our house to be a real community space.” She took her architectural inspiration from many trips to Napa Valley. “I love the open living that Californians do so well, and I wanted to bring that here.”

This was initially a challenge, because Love’s first plan was to renovate an old, white farmhouse that stood on the lot. “I’d lived in the neighborhood and walked by the farmhouse all the time,” she says. “It was so charming.” After working on design and redesign, building designer Stephen Hentschel gently broke it to her. “He said, ‘I’ve tried it 101 different ways, and to get the house you want, it makes more sense to start from scratch.’ He was absolutely right,” Love says. “So we decided to build new but honor the charm of the original house and keep some original elements—doors, light fixtures, wood from an old fence—and incorporate them into the new house.”

Despite the switch from renovation to building new, Love loved the process. “I’ve always said I’m a frustrated interior designer. Working with Stephen was wonderful. He’s an artist. And [builders] Larry Larsen and Jeff Englund and their crew were amazing. Because of family and work, I ended up doing all my house and design thinking between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. I’d text an idea to Stephen in the middle of the night. I know it’s not true, but he made me feel like I was his only client. I had Jeff Englund on speed dial. I would call and say, ‘I just ordered an animal trough, and we’re going to make it into a bar sink!’ So many times they must have been thinking to themselves, ‘Oh, my gosh, she is crazy.’ But we all worked together so well. It was a great collaboration,” Love says.

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