Shore To Please

Design by Richard Scuderi
Photography by Marisa Pellegrini
Text by Donna Rolando

Two friends took a ride to Highlands one day and came away with the find of their lives. With views of both the Atlantic waterfront and the more distant NYC skyline, a luxury high-rise condo stole their hearts. It would become a full-time residence for one of them and an ocean getaway for the other—a desig ner—but only after a complete overhaul.

Though sold on the location, they found the two-bedroom condo built in 1976 clinging to the past with popcorn ceilings, mirrored walls and no fireplace for that toasty touch. 

A gut-job renovation was called for. “As soon as we got the keys, we started it,” says Rich Scuderi, owner of Clinton-based Mavin Hill Designs. The work was completed in June 2022.

While Scuderi (host of Comcast’s Designed for the Times) had the design chops, he worked with his best friend, the late Frank Mazzarella, M.D., a longtime Nutley internist and later chief medical officer at Clara Maass Medical Center in Belleville, who wanted a coastal connection—light, bright and masculine. 

The Shore home gained party power with the toppling of a wall to join the great room and the kitchen.

Scuderi hit the mark with Benjamin Moore’s Stonington Gray, which he accented with blue and navy throughout, while staining the solid oak floor to enhance the grain in another common thread.

To create one big space for entertainment, Scuderi recalls how he ripped out a wall between the kitchen and the great room, comfortably fitting in a sizable island with tufted gray chenille stools. “We had a large party,” he says. “Not only can you eat at the island, but everything could be served on the island.”

For decorative lighting above the island, Scuderi built a box to accommodate bubble-glass pendants by Hesco. Illumination was simpler in the counter area, where, he notes, the backsplash is “Carrara marble in a herringbone pattern that is very pretty with undercounter lighting.” 

Doubling as a china cabinet, the dining room sideboard is a highlight with illuminated glass and a companion ocean abstract.

As with the Carrara, gray veining also wows the white quartz counters, which extend from the gray wood island to the white, Shaker-style cabinets with polished-nickel hardware. Warming up the white with artwork and accessories, the designer, in his own words, “peppered the kitchen with pops of cobalt blue glass from the Mavin Hill collection.”

A party-time complement of the kitchen, the transitional-style great room became a hotspot with its own fireplace, but only after Scuderi demolished a wall of mirrors to make way for an electric fireplace by Dimplex, operated by remote control. Super-white built-ins brighten the space around the fireplace, which combines a fieldstone look with a reclaimed wood beam.

With navy grass paper and a hammered copper mirror, the headboard wall in the primary bedroom knows how to turn heads.

As the home was steered away from the former design’s earth tones and into the drama of blue and white, coastal influences set the tone. One example is the area rug featuring waves like the ones right outside the triple windows—a setting meant for relaxing in navy swivel recliners. Another is the abstract artwork, sourced from Mavin Hill like the rug. Casual elegance was the aim in the great room’s Ethan Allen and Bassett furniture, which minimizes maintenance with Sunbrella fabric, yet elevates with an inlaid marble table. 

On the twin sofas, tie-dye fabrics and lime add a color punch, the latter one of Scuderi’s favorite accents. The fireside chairs, in Dr. Mazzarella’s family for more than 100 years, were revamped in navy velvet and silver leaf, while stackable, distressed-wood tables and navy ceramic lamps complete the scene. 

In the dining room, Scuderi was quick to scrap another mirrored wall and use custom rugs to spread the home’s signature blue-and-white motif. “I brought in another color of the ocean,” he says of the pale baby-blue sideboard with china cabinet that lights up the night. With spectacular vistas beckoning from the covered balcony, guests can enjoy dinner with a view at the wood table joined by a mix of navy tufted and wooden chairs. 

Newburyport Blue and white shiplap join in creating a bathroom’s oceanic setting, just right for a sea-turtle print.

Though Scuderi sticks to the blue-and-white scheme, each room is unique, as seen in the way Benjamin Moore Newburyport Blue plays off the white of a bathroom’s shiplap walls and quartz-top Shaker vanity. A windowless room could have been a challenge to make bright, but Scuderi curated a mirror-framed mirror to max the industrial lighting. For a more modern edge, he added marble hexagon flooring. 

The primary bedroom gave Scuderi an opportunity to work with real grass paper in navy by Pacific Designs International to accent the room’s neutral gray. A hammered-copper coastal mirror also dazzles above the maple sleigh bed, while crown molding makes the setting distinctive. In another nod to the Shore, there’s Martha Stewart’s tie-die bedding and a custom coastal rug. Polished-nickel lamps add bedside sparkle and palm-print artwork keeps blue bountiful.

Room by room, the two friends created a special place to embrace breathtaking vistas. “Ecstatic” over the results, Dr. Mazzarelli had three housewarming parties to show it off, Scuderi says, and “he really wanted it to be in a magazine.”