Celebrated interior designer, Celerie Kemble’s Dominican Republic vacation home is so idyllic. It is filled with natural sun light however, there’s another intangible quality about the house that makes it feel so light that it is about to float away. Below is an excerpt from an article by Architectural Digest about how she acquired the house and some more photos of this fabulous getaway.
The story goes that one day about 10 years ago, a friend alerted them to an available stretch of land along the Dominican Republic’s northern shore: 2,000 staggeringly beautiful jungled acres, bordered by a huge beach called Playa Grande that’s lapped by Windex-blue Caribbean waters. Imagine the greatest tropical screen-saver you’ve ever seen and you get the idea. “It was like we’d been dropped down into paradise,” Kemble says. “Looking around, I thought, Oh my God, how do we not screw up this opportunity?”
Within weeks, the couple persuaded some friends—among them Charlie Rose, Mariska Hargitay, and George Soros—to come aboard as investors and allow Kemble to mastermind a familial resort with a clubhouse, cabanas, and bungalows. Ten years later, Kemble is standing on the porch of Casa Guava, her oceanfront home at Playa Grande Beach Club, and laughing at the “dream come true–slash–nightmare,” as she puts it, of having complete creative control. “There was the constant fear that people would walk in and say, ‘This place looks like crazytown,'”she recalls, in typical self-deprecating fashion. “Like, ‘Were you drinking while decorating?'”
xo, Sarah
