Inside a Tropical Luxury Home on Anna Maria Island, Florida

Hi, Luxury Home Show. Welcome to the beautiful Anna Maria Island. I'm Liv, and this is my eco-conscious, Bali-inspired retreat and rental. There is so much magic behind this blue door. Let me show you around. This is our Bali-inspired saltwater pool. So this primary suite is an oasis in multiple ways. There it is. Whoa, like floating in the clouds. Hi, we're gonna start the tour today with this iconic blue door on Anna Maria Island. This beauty became a famous scavenger hunt here on the island over a decade ago when the previous owner had taken their front door and moved it to here and painted it blue. And this was such a lush property that you couldn't see anything behind it. So it was like this Alice in Wonderland kind of mystery, like what's behind the blue door? So at one point in time, a teenager drove by, captioned it, and said, Anna Maria, find this blue door. And it started this wild scavenger hunt that lasted for years and years and years. And still to this day, people will come by and take pictures right here in front of the blue door. So our property is just 1 1⁄2 blocks from the Gulf Shore, and it is beautiful white sand quartz, powdery fine, crystal blue waters, almost like the Caribbean. So our property is completely surrounded by these lush areca palms all the way around. So it really gives so much privacy when you're doing retreats or just vacationing with your family. So this is our primary part of our driveway here. Right now we have a moat parked. So something that is so fun about Anna Maria Island is it's laid back, old Florida lifestyle. So when you come, you have to rent a golf cart, a moke, get some bikes. There's nothing better than cruising this island at a slow pace, taking in the sunshine, the breeze. It really is the epitome of what this island is about. So when our family dreamt of having a space that we could come each year with our family, our friends, and then offer this to the world, we thought it would be amazing to utilize everything that Florida has to offer. And so we created a food forest all around the property so when you come and stay, you can enjoy mangoes off the tree, bananas, lychees. Let me show you some of these beautiful fruits that you can't have all over the world, but only in these tropical climates. So here we have an avocado tree. Over here you'll spot two pineapple bushes. We have three different varieties of bananas all over, some variegated, some pink in nature. We have this organic, sweet heart lychee and a cherry tree that's a tropical cherry tree. All right, I'm gonna take you inside now. And as we go towards the door, you'll see this waterproof decking we put in. And something to note before we go in is I even have this sticker when I welcome guests to Loom at the Shore. I just mentioned that this is a sacred space. I designed it through meditation and prayer work with the ancestry of the island. And so I always invite people to take off the shoes. Plus the material in here feels amazing on your feet. So I'd love to tell you a little bit about what this space has meant for our family and for the community. When we first purchased this, it needed a lot of love, but it also gave us some really beautiful inspiration. But I really just wanted to create this from a place of understanding wellness. And I wanted to be able to travel in a way that was more conscious. I noticed whenever our family would travel around the world there was bleach sheets and they often use toxic chemicals to clean the space. And I thought, what would it be like if not only could we provide a space for our family and our community, but also for the world to come and be able to have a safe haven and a place that cares for the earth and then cares for you while you're here enjoying the space. So you'll notice in every room there is a door to the garden or the pool. And that is one of the things I really wanted to do here is create almost this biophilic seamless design where you're one with the outdoors. So our front door, but you'll notice in every room it's so easy to have your own little patio and an oasis in all the different spaces. You'll notice throughout there is this balance of serenity and play. Our family loves to invite our best friends down. Every time we come and we go and us and all the kids, we play pickleball while some of the kids are on the playground. We even provide a QR code here for guests so they don't even have to wonder where the courts are. They're just right down the road. We play games. We sit around this beautiful organic table and play cards with the kids. And it's just like so relaxed. It's all our family and community's joy to be able to come and just pile up in this space and enjoy the playful aspects but also get the healing aspects. One thing that was really important to me when I designed this space was to use organic materials wherever I could. So from the plant-based insulation that we used in the walls, the guy who installed it actually ate it off the walls to show us how non-toxic it was, to the actual walls using this micro cement which is very non-toxic, earth-friendly, to the actual design pieces I used as well. So this piece right here, I could stare at it all day long. Throughout the day, the light dazzles and highlights it in so many different ways. But if you can see the way the yarn falls, it's like you're staring at the ripples of the sand. So what I love about this house is the natural lighting in every room. I believe we have a skylight almost in every space. But what is really exciting is that even maybe even more extraordinary is in the evening when you really get to utilize the uplighting we have in all the spaces, the LED lights on our planters. It creates a beautiful, calming ambience. And everywhere you look, we have plants, planters that are built in and that not only fosters clean air but they each have different properties that I chose for different reasons, some for sense, some for just their unique rarity. We even designed it for people who are plant-loving people to be able to take clippings home and take a piece of that with them when they come and stay with us. So one of my favorite spots in the house is this kitchen. It actually originally wasn't supposed to have this much of a Japandi minimalist style. But as we were into the process, I felt myself really just wanting a kitchen that felt seamless, easy, simple, clean. And so I started taking a lot of inspiration from the Japandi style of just really organic shapes, neutral colors. This kitchen also is European style. So the height of the cabinets, the height of the bar is a lot higher. So tall people love cooking here. I'm not one of them, but when they come, it really feels like a chef's kitchen. Because our family has been really devoted to non-toxic living for over a decade now, when we went to stock this kitchen, we really wanted to stock it well with the best of the best. So we have non-toxic cookware, non-toxic storage containers, non-toxic utensils, just so that not only it's what we prefer as a family, but we wanted to kind of introduce our guests to another way of living. One of the things that we always order when we come into town are these fresh organic coconuts from AMI Coconuts. It's the coolest thing on the island. And there's nothing better than having organic coconut water to fill up on electrolytes right after a long day of travel. Now, one of my favorite games to play with every new guest and new friend who comes in is where is the fridge? The seamlessness of these cabinets really hides everything so well and adds an element of play and simplicity. So we have our fridge here. We have two freezer drawers. We have an oven. We don't have a microwave in this space to obviously prevent the EMFs of that. So for a lot of families that come and visit, that's a little bit of adjustment, especially when it comes to their morning coffee. They're like, how are we supposed to heat this up? I'm like, you can just heat it in a pot. Here we have this Fellow Brands little coffee station. This is an addition post the hurricane, and I'm so glad we added this little unit to here because it's endless good storage. We have our coffee filters, little cozies. If you go to the beach, it says party like a Florida man. We provide for all our guests, and we use here this local organic coffee. So we set this out so people can use the grinder and really have the full experience of your morning coffee. And there's nothing like the natural sunlight cascading on this part of the house. So I'm really glad we have this highlight here. All right, I'm gonna take you back in our guest quarters. So follow me down this hallway. Worth noting here in the hallway is our home control system. And at a click of a button, you can have the ambience setting you want. You can have the music you want, both by the pool, inside. It just allows for the vibes to say hi the entire time you're here. All right, so we are entering into our guest bathroom here, which if you had seen it before, you can see that it was a very kind of old and crusty Florida bathroom. And so there wasn't much space to utilize. So I knew it was really important to make it as seamless as possible. One attribute that I wanted is for everything to be seamlessly off the ground, down to the trash can, right? So that it just felt like you could kind of glide and float through the space. And worth mentioning is even though the design is pretty monochromatic, as you can see, I think it's always important to ground down with something old, vintage, with a little bit of color. And we found this rug from Lulu in Georgia, and it's been the perfect little piece to add just a touch of color here. One thing I love about this shower is that it is connected to the pool. So when we are swimming and a kid has to go to the restroom or we're coming back from the beach, you can just hop right in here, strip down, wash the kids off, grab a little towel from the hallway. And it is just like the ease of that I haven't experienced anywhere else. And in every bathroom here, we provide non-toxic products from Public Goods so that when you come and visit Loom, you don't have to bring any of your detergents or body products if you choose not to. You can come with a light load and leave even lighter as the space just really lifts you the entire time you're here. Well, now is time to show you the crown jewel of this house. This is our Bali-inspired saltwater pool. So we designed this pool to be very luxurious and provide all the elements in one spot. We have this fire pit here that we light up day and night and enjoy. And there's nothing like being by the fire and in the water. We also have this kind of playful area here where it's almost like a beach entry for our kids to slip and slide and splash around. We have bubblers that go throughout, a waterfall fountain, because we have so many kids when we're piling up. We bring out a basketball hoop and this is just where we spend all day. And when I dreamt this pool up, I wanted it to be as seamless as possible from the movement inside to outside. And I'm just so love coming out here, opening the doors with your morning coffee, sitting by the pool, hearing the fountain, hearing the breeze of the palms. There is just nothing that can transport you to another world than sitting out here. So we have tons of seating, both in the pool and on the parameters of the pool. One of the things I definitely wanted to put in here was a space to be able to have your cocktail or your mocktail while your kids are raising hell all around you. So when my friend Allie and I are here, we set up shop right here. We were able to set our drink and be playful with the kids. It's so much fun. We also have another area over there. You can hang out and barbecue by the grill and then come this way. My best friend Allie actually decided to join us today on this trip down to Florida. She is my sole sister from another mister. And we, our families live in Philly, but we come down here and travel multiple times a year to all be together and just have that community commune feel and I'm just so thankful you're here. Cheers. Should we show them the rest of the garden? Yeah, let's do it. All right. Are you up for a game of cornhole? Yeah. Oh. Oh, dud. Nice. I mean, who doesn't want a hammock, you know, being held and ushered under two coconut palms? This was one of the most important things for us to implement. And it turned out like beyond my wildest dreams. Like, there it is. Whoa. Like floating in the clouds. My favorite thing about Loom, coming to Loom at the Shore, is bringing my three kids and having her two kids. It's the perfect stay for little ones and big ones. We get to play, we get to have fun, we get to relax, enjoy the peace, the serenity, and our kids have a blast. Yeah, it's a kid's playground, but maybe more importantly, it's an adult playground. These are the coolest palm trees. They're flat. They're called traveler's palms. This is what they look like in their glory. These are still recovering slowly from the hurricane, but pretty soon they'll just be these massive leaves sprawling out. And there's nothing like that view from our two guest bedrooms with these arched windows. The pre-hurricane, it was like a queen plant. All right, let me round you back into the front part of the garden. You can see the oolite stone cascading you to this outdoor table. This table has a really cool story. The previous owner, the grandfather of the male, he had built this table out of wash basins when the owner was a little boy, and it was his beloved treasure. And so he actually had it brought to this property years ago. And so you can even see the top of this is the shape of a basin. So we kept it just as is. We just added stucco over the top as the cement had been crumbling. And it just makes me happy every time. Actually, the owner came by after we finished the renovation, and he teared up when he saw it and walked around and said that he couldn't have been happier with how we had brought forth a lot of the beauty that he had already created. All right, I'm gonna take you into our first guest bedroom that is off the dining table. This room is called The Haven, and for good reason. It is made with the energy that is almost like if the earth could reach up and give you a hug. There is no room that you feel more still and grounded than in this space. As you can see, these really special niche cutouts with the LED backlighting. We have so many moments where I'll come in and find my little girl curled up here reading a book or the kids playing hide and seek in these little coves in the basket, and it just brings me so much joy. So since the hurricane, some things in here have changed, and this room probably would have been my least favorite out of here. I mean, they're all gorgeous, but this one has, since the hurricane and we redid things where we added a platform bed, we added these built-in side tables, we micro-cemented it like the rest of the house, and now this is one of my favorite spaces to come and have this view of the hammock. So one of the really special features here is that we have a solar-powered shade on the outside of the house to bring down the privacy that you would need in a room like this, but it doesn't obstruct the beautiful arches or the design work. So over here, we have another one of these stunning wall hangings from the artisans in Mexico. The haven, in particular, we added some touches of black just to give a little bit more of that masculine contrast. It's in the mirror, it's in the hooks, and I always saw it that way, but it's been interesting since the room got completed. You can kind of feel there, whereas the alcove has some more of the feminine energy, this one really does house a little bit more of the masculine kind of strength, even though it's just a little touch. Around the perimeter of each room, we have these LED uplightings for just a muy bueno atmosphere every night and in the day, as you can see. This house originally had a pitched roof in this section, but it was filled with the ductwork and old electric wiring, and I knew right away, especially trying to approach this in the most organic, non-toxic way we can, is I wanted to get rid of all the ductwork, all the old electric, you know, that just kind of empty spaces and places hold old energy. So if you have the opportunity, you wanna clean that out. So the first thing I was like, we are raising this roof, which we did. Then the question is, how do you hide the electric? How do you hide the AC? And I knew right away we wanted to use a more European-style way of functioning in the house with air and cooling and heat, and so we got these really high-end mini splits that are super efficient, super quiet, really prevent dust and mold, and really give each guest in each room the ability to control their temperature at night. So something I'm really excited about in this house that a lot of people have enjoyed is two things, you know, with flow of the house, efficiency and seamlessness were really important. So next to each bedside, you have all the different USBs and plugs, and really that helps, you know, keep from wires being crossed across the room. Everything is just right at your fingertips. Another thing we wanted to do was add these really seamless modern switches. Because we had so many different types of lighting in here, niche lighting, LED lighting, I didn't want people to feel confused, and so we had the wall plates engraved with the different types of lights. So again, it just is very easy and effortless, even though this house is super high-tech, it's also super simple, and we try to guide the flow as easy as possible for people. So we're gonna exit the haven, which I'll just make note of before we do, is that this was named after my son, Stag Haven, and the other room is named after my best friend, Allie, who we met earlier. Hey, girlfriend. Hey. First off, pre-renovation, Allie always found herself wanting to stay in this room, and we just believe that energy is everything, so if we subconsciously find ourself in a space, then it's meant for us. And then post-renovation, I think you've been able to articulate more why you're drawn to this room. This room is very feminine, and light, and bright, and airy. It is every fashionista's dream come true. You have this gorgeous full-length mirror here, so you can check your fit on the way out, you can take a cute selfie, you have a beautiful closet, you can hang all your cute clothes, and you just feel at home in your body and your soul when you're resting in this room. So yeah, it took about two and a half years to complete renovation, which Allie knows what that journey was like for us flying back and forth with newborn babies, and she often was helping us from a distance kind of figure out the design work, and especially once we got it up and running, helping us get it out in the world. She has as much creative flow as I have, and we have so much fun designing things together, finding ways to tell those stories. She just came out with this new hat brand with our company Pure Shade, and we're gonna have a launch party here in a month, and so this is just like a dream that is coming true, like right before our eyes, to be able to not only raise our kids together, but then to find this other era of creativity and feminine flow, and we're just like having the time of our life. All right, girlfriend, I think we're wrapped up here. Thanks for being in the video. We had just wrapped up. We were just starting to get to enjoy the fruits of our labor. We had this bangin' celebration. We invited the community out, and vendors just kind of be like, we're here, we wanna be a part of this beautiful island community, and three days after we wrapped up that party, Allie and her kids and her mom, we were all still piled up here, and we knew the hurricane, Hurricane Helene, was coming in, and there was all different predictions of where it was gonna hit. I really had a lot of faith that the island would be protected, because it always had been, and in the 60-some years this house had existed here, there had never been water in the house, so our family decided to stay and ride it out, because the predictions seemed to be bringing it to the panhandle. Allie and her kids decided to jet back to Philly, and they left her mom behind with us, because she had a flight the next day, and we felt a little uneasy being here with our kids, but again, we are on high point on the island. There'd never been water in, and we thought, okay, if there's a little bit of water, at least we can be here to pump it out and do what we can, so we made the tough decision to stay and kind of protect the space, and when the hurricane started to come through, even though it was over 50 miles off the Gulf, it was the worst timing possible with high tide, and so about 9 p.m., the waters started to rise so much where I could see them coming on the road, and then it started to cover the pool deck and the lawn. Allie's mom went to bed with our kids, but at this point, there was no electricity, kind of the whole island was shut down, and once the water started getting in past our kids' room, which is at a lower point, we started to really sweat it, and about the time it went to our highest level and started leaking into my baby's crib, we said, okay, we've gotta call 911, and they got here so quickly. It was some sort of military contraption of a vehicle that could be raised, and even though it was terrifying, every time we let the door open, just tons and tons of water would rush in, and they could only rescue us one at a time. They couldn't grab our luggage with us, and so the feeling of knowing, yes, we're getting taken away, but right before my eyes, I could see the house was going to be really, really compromised, and by the time they got us loaded and started moving in that direction, there was another, there was a house on fire with an elderly woman on the porch and her dogs. We had to stop and rescue them, and then by that point, the water had raised so high, there was nowhere on the island that was not underwater other than the fire department, so we actually stayed the night in the fire department and all cuddled up in a room with little tiny blankets, but it felt amazing and so safe and comforting to have a team of people. They brought us water, and they gave us everything they could. They would've given us the shirt off their back, and at that point in time, there was such a rallying of the community, of the island in support. We were getting calls from our construction workers and people that we just barely even knew who were stopping by for us, and that really solidified how special this community is and also how strong it is, and we just felt the love really around the world from our friends and family. So I'm gonna take you into the dining room here. This was originally a den. They used a TV room, and to me, it felt like the perfect opportunity to put a big table that could house a ton of people, and you could watch the kids and hop in and out of the kitchen. One of the pieces that I loved so much from the original renovation, well, I had two favorites, and they were both upcycled antiques, and one of them was the table, and the other one was the console table that we had in the living room, and both of them got destroyed, and those actually broke my heart more than the new appliances and beds being ruined, so when I found this table up in Philly, actually, it was like it started to revive my heart to do the design work again. We found this beautiful blue coastal marble from Crate and Barrel. It seats eight to 10 comfortably, and one thing I just love about the properties of this, so blue energetically always supports communication, speaking your truth, bonding with your loved ones, and so I just love that the marble fits with the intention of this space. Here's a bonus bar area that's amazing to have all your fun drinks that you want for the pool. Just right here, kids can come in and grab them, and every American knows you have to have nugget ice when you're on vacation. This is the best ice you can possibly have. It makes all mocktails and cocktails amazing. I'll just mention real quick, this is a carbonation machine, and another eco-conscious idea I had is, you know, if we provide the carbonation that everyone goes and buys their LaCroix's and their Spindrift's and all those are lovely. They obviously produce a lot of waste and not everyone recycles, and so I thought this would kind of inspire creativity with your mocktails and your cocktails to have carbonation available. All right, come on in here to the primary suite. So this primary suite, we named the Polaris Suite because it has the energy of the North Star, meaning if you are looking for some guidance, some clarity on your life, or just to really connect with the essence of who you are, this bedroom really supports that process. So this primary suite is an oasis in multiple ways. We have the outdoor shower and bathroom, which I'll get to in a minute, but first I have to highlight this invisible door in this wall. So many people at first glance just don't even recognize that it is a door. Most people assume that it's a closet, but it is actually a little kid's treasure trove. So come on in. So prior to the flood, we just had squeezed a little bunk bed in, and after six months of using it, we realized that bunk bed really wasn't best for the littles. It made it really hard to get up and down and only had a small ledge there. So this time around, the gift of the flood and the renovation was that I could have had the time and the space to really think through what this could be. And so I wanted it, again, to be seamless with the rest of the house. So we did built-ins, we used the micro-topping, and then our only real design challenge at that point, after I measured and felt it all through, was how we were gonna put up a barrier. And so my husband and I dreamed up this acrylic wave, almost like bringing in the holographic aspects of the ocean. My kids just die over this, and I've gotten so much feedback from a lot of the guests. There's little cutouts that we have rain sticks, little balmy drums, there's books everywhere, stuffies everywhere. Truly, the families say that stay here, that between this and the pool, they can't even get the kids to the beach because it is just such an exciting experience. I'll also mention that this invisible door has a bonus of using this wood veneer from the Wood Veneer Hub. And originally, I wanted the wood paneling to be just wood paneling, but it wasn't available at the time, and so I got the felt, and I'm so thankful I did because it creates this beautiful sound barrier between the kids' room and our room. I also will mention this blackout shade is in this room with our projector. So we have two TVs. We have the frame TV in the living room, and then we have this projector screen that we can pull down at night and all pile up in this king bed and watch a fun movie. So that is absolutely a tradition that we do every time we're down here, pile up in the bed as one big family, draw down the screen and watch a favorite show. All right, so now I will take you into one of the best features of the house, our little oasis that has so many dimensions to it. So this space was an old garage bathroom, if you can imagine, just a corner sink, a toilet, and a little bit of a laundry room. So I really didn't have a lot to work with from the footprint of the house. So I decided to move the vanity into the master bedroom. And then I thought, okay, how can I fit an actual shower in here and create an outdoor experience? So I put the rain shower on the ceiling. So if you have to shower inside, you have that option. Of course, the big soaking tub is a huge feature. We provide guests with special salts and bubble baths. Literally me and Allie's kids can all line up in this tub. It's so huge and splash around. But then I had this vision kind of late in the game to build this seclusive outdoor oasis, again, carrying through this Bali-like oolite stone that's already patinaed and grown in little plant life. And I've had many experiences with many outdoor showers and so many of them have the wood slats, they have space underneath. So you always feel a little bit like, ooh, could someone like peek on me? But this is solid. And we don't shower anywhere else, actually. We scoop up the kids from the beach. We bring them in here. We all strip down. We don't get any sand in the house. We get to play. They love using the hose. We catch little frogs, little snails. It's just truly a dreamland. And I never even imagined taking a shower in the evening, but I really can't decide what's my favorite, whether it's when the sun is coming in, creating the shadow effect on the wall, or being out here with the moonlight and the crickets and the silence and the alabaster light that is reminiscent of the moon with the moonlight shining down. There's no better way to start a day than out here and end the day out here. I really hope you enjoyed the tour of the magic behind the blue door. If you did, please check out this video here and I'll see you next time. Hello, Luxury Home Show. My name is Ann Malem and I'm the founder of SolidCore. And I'm Brett Eaton. I'm a high-performance coach and keynote speaker. Come check out our house. Since it was founded in 2013, SolidCore has taken America by storm. In essence, it is athletic pilates, and it's the hardest workout that you've never done.