A home bed and breakfast

Author and interior designer Anne Kleinberg transforms home

By GLORIA DEUTSCH
bnb 521 (photo credit: URIEL MESSA)
bnb 521
(photo credit: URIEL MESSA)
Anne Kleinberg, author, interior designer and, for the last few years, landlady, decided to turn her beautiful home into a boutique bed and breakfast when she realized how much she loved to entertain and have people around.
“My husband’s children are all grown up and have their own homes,” she says.
“Someone suggested I start having paying guests as a joke, and it evolved into a serious venture.”
And so Casa Caesarea was born. Guests have rooms on the upper floor for privacy and the incredible view of the golf course around them, as the house was built near the 14th hole. The private areas still make up the bulk of the house and carry the stamp of an ex-New Yorker with impeccable taste and an eye for style.
Kleinberg and her engineer husband, Oded, had been living in Herzliya Pituah but found it too crowded and noisy.
“I’ve always loved Caesarea ever since I came here as a teenager to a concert in the amphitheater in 1971,” recalls Kleinberg.
“It’s so calm here – there are no electric poles or telegraph cables above ground, no high-rises – just gorgeous, peaceful, elegant surroundings.”
They decided to build their home from scratch and with the help of an architect, were able to create their ideal living space – a place that, she feels, welcomes and embraces the visitor.
“I wanted a great feeling as you walk in, welcoming but not pretentious,” Kleinberg says. “We both contributed to the layout, deciding we did not want small rooms and that the house should be U-shaped.
The main thing was that when you walk in, you see the whole background outside through the living-room window.”
They also thought ahead to a time when they would be less agile.
“We decided to put our living quarters including the master bedroom, on the ground floor, so as not to have to go up and down stairs,” she says. They decided to choose a design bigger than they really needed to make the house easier to sell in the distant future.
The lounge looks straight out to the golf course, and they often see players and hear the crack of the first swing.
“Luckily no one has ever lobbed a ball through our window,” smiles Kleinberg.
They put in a French limestone fireplace and French windows. The color chosen for the walls of the whole house was a basic taupe shade, which she says can look totally different depending on the lighting.
“Sometimes it’s pink, sometimes lavender, sometimes beige,” Kleinberg explains.
The floors are pink marble, which she feels adds to the warmth of the house, and in the dining room she had the tiler cut black tiles into small diamond shapes to achieve the Dutch interior look.
Kleinberg kept the furnishings neutral except for two purple armchairs in washable suede. The coffee table came from Pitaro- Hecht, while the two sofa tables with wrought iron bases and glass tops came from Turkiz.
On the walls they have a Sali Ariel painting of Sheinkin Street in Tel Aviv, and a Charles Fazzino 3D abstract which was a wedding gift to themselves when they visited New York.
The wall unit in the library was designed by Anne around the piano. It is cream-colored lacquered wood with a mahogany background, and here she keeps her design books as well as her own cookery books and her successful novel, Menopause in Manhattan, which came out in 2011. The elegant chairs are antique reproductions and the Cajun Blue Dog was acquired on a trip to New Orleans.
The kitchen, as befits a cookbook writer, is complex, organized and she says took her a year to complete.
“It’s designed in zones,” Kleinberg says.
The first is the cooking zone, with one of her favorite gadgets, a pot filler, extending from the wall.
“The hands of the clock are spoons and forks,” she points out.
Zone two is the cleaning area, with sink and dishwasher; three is the baking area, with bread machine, mixer and all the necessary utensils; and four is the serving area, including the island and extra sink.
Conveniently next to the kitchen is the elegant dining room with a custom-made square table that can extend to a rectangle seating 16. The Klismos chairs are upholstered with heavy cotton material brought from New York, the design being fruit and flowers on a black background. A light pink credenza in the background adds a splash of color.
Outside, a 14-meter pool is a tempting sight. It was created for serious laps, and Kleinberg designed the tiles. The patio floor is made of the same marble as the house but is sanded. The columns which support it are structural but nevertheless, are topped with Doric design capitals.
For the awning they chose sailcloth and had it made up into the exact size.
“It sways in the wind and sounds like the flapping of sails,” says Kleinberg.
Often brides stay over and leave to their wedding from Casa Caesarea, so she has made the bedrooms romantic havens, all white with drapes and hangings. These rooms also double as honeymoon suites.
“I also have events here, private parties and chef dinners,” says Kleinberg. “I do workshops on self-publishing and teach design and entertaining. I just love to use the house.”


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