Dream House Come True
Couple made sure their Lewes-area home had everything they wanted — including a vending machine
By Lynn R. Parks | Photographs by Carolyn Watson
From the May 2023 issue
Jared Love has always wanted a vending machine in his home. “A real, industrial vending machine,” he says. His wife, Amanda, was agreeable. But there were conditions: “I have to be able to hide it,” she told him.
When they were ready to build their new home in the Showfield development near Lewes, included in the plans was a second-story hall closet, the perfect size for a vending machine. Jared was happy. And to make Amanda happy, the interior of the closet is sealed from view by a wooden, naturally finished barn door.
In early spring, with the vending machine still on order, Jared wasn’t sure how he would stock it, other than it won’t have any drinks; they would require heavier machinery than he wanted, he says. There will be snacks. But with two daughters in the house (Betsy, 10, and Campbell, 6), “I also have to figure out a pricing strategy that limits what they do,” Jared says. “They are so excited; given the chance, they would probably just get 50 packs of Oreos.”
The Loves were living in Mountainside, N.J., near New York City, when they bought their Showfield lot in 2020, with the intention of building a vacation home. “But with everything that evolved through COVID, we decided to make the move to live here permanently,” Amanda says.
They found plans they liked in Southern Living magazine. The contractor was Canalfront Builders, near Lewes; construction started in November 2021 and was completed last June.
Amanda, who did the interior decorating herself, says she and Jared were determined to include features as they envisioned them, and not to put things off for future home-improvement projects. “We realized that things we said we would do in other homes never really happened,” she explains. “So we wanted to do everything the way that we wanted it, at the beginning. We built it as our dream house.”
One thing that she wanted to include was a variety of trim and wood accents. Just inside the front door, the walls are covered in board-and-batten, painted white and mirroring the outdoor siding. Shiplap covers the walls at the top of the stairs, above the living room fireplace and, where it is set at an angle, behind the bed in Campbell’s bedroom. In Betsy’s room, wood trim on the wall behind her bed forms a trellis.
The living room mantel is a single, unfinished board, thick and with a dark, very visible knot on the front edge. “I love that piece of wood, for whatever reason,” Amanda says.
A dark wooden hood over the kitchen stove matches a hutch on the opposite wall. Pale gray picket tiles, shaped like the boards on a picket fence and laid horizontally, cover the walls above the stove and the counters. “They bring a little bit of dimension to the room,” Amanda says. The farmhouse sink is dark gray and cabinet handles as well as the sink fixtures are black.
“Overall, neutral is what we like — whites, browns and grays,” Amanda says. But that doesn’t mean that the house lacks bright color. Wallpaper in Amanda’s main-floor office features blue octopi; the trim is painted deep blue to match. The pantry has wallpaper, featuring shades of green with white hydrangea blooms, on the ceiling. And the girls’ second-story bathrooms feature colorful wallpaper: white bunnies with pink and white roses and hibiscus in Campbell’s room and stampeding white zebras on a coral background in Betsy’s.
Then there’s all the color from the outside. Windows across the back of the house, including in Amanda and Jared’s bedroom, the living room, kitchen and dining area, look toward the northwest and White’s Pond.
“We didn’t put any [mullions] on the back windows, because we wanted to make sure that we had unobstructed views,” Amanda says. “We have beautiful sunsets. And in the morning, enjoying a cup of coffee has a different feel to it if you can look at a body of water at the same time.”