La Jolla Real Estate: La Jolla Luxury Homes

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Relocating to La Jolla communities is easier than you think! Although there are several La Jolla communities homes to choose from, first, you have to establish a criteria for choosing and buying the perfect La Jolla home. Find out how this family transplanted themselves from across the country, and have found the perfect La Jolla lifestyle.

After an early morning match on the tennis courts out back, entrepreneur Marcus Katz is ambling around his Rancho Santa Fe home. Sean, his youngest son and a student at Palomar College, is handling a delivery. Missy and Micky, two inseparable Burmese cats, inspect the newly arrived boxes. A houseguest surfaces; everyone pauses to discuss whether the Padres play in town this weekend.

Light pours into the single-story Spanish/Mediterranean-style house through large windows and French doors that open onto a lushly landscaped Cameroon-flagstone patio with a pool. Missing from the scene is Katz' life partner, Pearl Baker. She's in London, taking a break from her five-year-old company, Academic Loan Group. Katz has lived all over the county: Solana Beach, downtown, Sail Bay, Mount Soledad, a small ranch in Rancho Santa Fe. At his Fourth of July party six years ago, he met Baker.

"When Pearl and I decided to be a team," he says, "we decided we needed a little more space."

Katz, semiretired from the student-loan business, is now focusing on a new venture, the All-American Football League. He is its founder and one of its directors.

He and Baker have lived in the bigger Rancho Santa Fe house-along with Sean, who has a private wing-for almost two years. The six-bedroom, six-and-a half- bath stucco house with clay-tile roof was built in 1999 by Frank C. Gatlin III.

When Katz and Baker bought the home in 2004, they were its third owners. The interior had been done in light, neutral colors, with an off-white, faux-crackle finish on the trim and fireplaces. In the entryway, there were ornate columns, some with Corinthian capitals. The family room was cavernous, with a peaked ceiling and large, dark wood beams.

"It had aspects used on the Ranch a lot that make the rooms more formal, fussier-what I call Rancho Santa Fe Mediterranean," says Jim Vollgraff, of Ted Vollgraff & Associates, in Vista, who remodeled the home. "They have a more relaxed lifestyle."

With the makeover, this home became perfect for social gatherings (like the couple's fund-raiser for Congressman Bob Filner) but laid-back enough for them to enjoy. The families visit often. Marcus' grandparents had eight kids, so a Katz reunion means a party for 200.

Katz and Baker opted not to use an interior designer, though they did enlist the help of Del Mar color consultant Diane Hall.

Although Katz values his privacy-he planted oldhamii bamboo all around the property-that's not what drew him to the Ranch.

"I'm from Atlanta, and they have a lot of trees in Georgia," he says. "And there are a lot of trees on the Ranch. Plus, having lived on coast and bay, I needed a break from the ocean mist."

Still, he wanted some water: "I love the idea of a house built around a pool for entertaining.

Vollgraff tore out columns at the entrance archway. At the openings to the living room and dining room, the precast columns remained, but he removed ornamentation to simplify them. Off the foyer, halls leading to the left and right had vaulted barrel ceilings with rectangular openings. Vollgraff transformed them into arches.

In the family room, the wood-beam ceiling was dropped and drywalled. Detailing was added to echo the ceiling in other areas. Vollgraff put in canister lighting and solar tubes, which let in natural light that seems as if it's reflected off water. Two large arched windows added on either side of the fireplace brought in more light, and crown molding gave the room definition. Vollgraff put down a hand-distressed walnut floor. The fireplace fascia was replaced with dark stone. The bar was entirely redone, with new cabinetry and a dark noce travertine counter.

The travertine floors in the dining room and kitchen remained. "We added French doors off the kitchen nook, so you can look at the pool and the fantastic grounds," Vollgraff says.

Color consultant Hall-who's also an oil painter-gave the couple a palette of 11 colors.

I use 80 percent neutral colors, which I tell clients are like the parents, and 20 accent colors, which are like the kids," she says. "Because you can't have a house full just of kids."

"We used all of her ideas and some of her colors," Katz says. "Sometimes you just can't tell how you like a color until you put it up and live with it for a while."

Hall gave the house an overall feeling of warmth and unity. "The white walls were pushing away, and the ceilings were high," she says. "The rooms needed to be brought together with a sense of richer colors."

By hunting through local shops-Genghis Khan, Treasures Furniture, Kern & Co., Kreiss-and antique stores, the couple furnished the house piece-by-piece.

The landscaping is the star of the property. Marcus wanted lots of palms and tropical plants to create the feeling of a resort; Pearl wanted sweeps of color. Making it happen was Steve Chianello, who owns Envision Landscape in Vista. One soothing element is a shady grotto at the entrance, with a waterfall and a stream that runs over river rocks, filling the adjacent guestrooms with the sound of running water.

"The dinner parties have been amazing," says Holly Collins, Baker's longtime friend and assistant. "With the French door open, you can hear the sound of water, from every room and every direction."

The effect was no accident, says Chianello. A spacious home like Katz and Baker's creates opportunities smaller residences sometimes cannot achieve. "When you have a large property, it is always good to create mystery," Chianello says.

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