The Oliver Home: An Ode To Beauty
When Jennifer Oliver first set foot in the house she and her husband David now call their forever home, they’d already bought it. The couple was in the process of selling their glorious home on Guilford Drive but hadn’t yet found a home to move into.
“We were out in California when we sold the house on Guilford, and we didn’t know where we were going to go. Nothing was for sale,” she explains. Family friend Bill Shdeed was with the pair in California, and he’d heard about a home that was available but would never be listed publicly. “I was like, I'm fine to sell our house but I don't know where we're going to go. And Bill said, ‘Well, I'll tell you where you're going to go.’ So we sent my mother over here, and she did a video walkthrough. Then David got on a plane and came back and bought it. I never saw the house in person.”
Oliver laughs as she tells this story, walking through the home she has almost completely transformed. A battalion of carpenters and craftspeople followed her vision, and the result is beautiful, personal, warm and eclectic.
This home is filled with treasures from Oliver’s mother’s attic and her own storage unit. She has curated this home with heirlooms like a sweet, pink marble-topped console gifted to her by her father, and her china collections, and lamp shades created by Fanny Bolen decades ago. And the Versace rug she bought years ago, her very favorite, which was a perfect fit for the spot in front of the custom breakfront between the kitchen and dining room. She added new Schumacher and Pierre Frey wall coverings and chandeliers: Murano glass, seashell and crystal, often in multiples to suit the scale of the home. “I’m not really a ‘less is more’ kind of girl,” she says, beaming.
It's a space that matches the energy David and Jennifer bring into the world: joyful, a tad eccentric and undeniably welcoming. A perfect forever home.
Photography by Sarah Strunk & Justin Miers
