He was shooting for a billiards room; she wanted the practicality of a formal dining room. A new-construction home in Fort Lee presented a dilemma for Steve and Rania, formerly of Astoria, Queens, and the parents of five children. Fortunately, a happy compromise was as near as the right designer. Indeed, principal designer Jaclyn Isaac, owner of Shrewsbury-based Doni…
There are some projects best held off with wee ones underfoot, and a whole-house renovation is one of them. That’s how Holmdel homeowners Sonya and Maulin felt in deciding to make do with a Mediterranean motif after their 2014 move. They always knew that one day they’d redesign their colonial to better fit their more transitional style and their…
In starting a new style chapter for their colonial home of 30 years, a Wyckoff couple sought to transform the living and dining rooms. Without abandoning their traditional vibe, these rooms would have to look and feel comfy even when it was the family’s turn to host the neighborhood book club. “We first furnished the house when we moved…
You might’ve played it safe last year and skipped the annual New Year’s get-together at your home. But now that you’re ready to be the life of the party again, it’s time to rethink the festivities and ensure your guests will be talking about the bash well into 2022. Hiring a planner for your affair is an option, but…
You might’ve played it safe last year and skipped the annual New Year’s get-together at your home. But now that you’re ready to be the life of the party again, it’s time to rethink the festivities and ensure your guests will be talking about the bash well into 2022. Hiring a planner for your affair is an option, but…
You might’ve played it safe last year and skipped the annual New Year’s get-together at your home. But now that you’re ready to be the life of the party again, it’s time to rethink the festivities and ensure your guests will be talking about the bash well into 2022. Hiring a planner for your affair is an option, but…
The challenge: to transform a drab, cramped co-op into a small masterpiece that glowed with a sophisticated palette and an Old World patina. Most of all, the space needed to feel bigger. Bruce and Marsha Baldinger had made a transition from a sprawling 6,500-square-foot custom property in rural New Vernon to their current primary residence, a 4,850-square-foot townhouse in…
Any ambitious homeowner who has begun a do-it-yourself design project knows that it quickly proves to be a challenge. Lots of choices must be made, among the latest furniture pieces and from a vast selection of paint colors that differ only in the tiniest ways. Just refining one’s vision is a design job in itself. For pro designers, that’s…
Golden years reveling in the golden rays of the Jersey Shore—that’s one Hoboken couple’s notion of an idyllic retirement setting. The summer home they purchased two years ago in Sea Girt, just a bike ride from the beach, already fit the bill in myriad ways. But for the style and function of a “forever” home, as owners Roseanne and…
With three children all grown up and in nests of their own, it was time for change back at the ranch they left behind in West Long Branch. The hall bathroom where the kids had spruced up for school was showing its age, with a shower/tub in a dated mix of beige tiles and green walls. The traditional-style room…
Any homeowner who’s started a DIY design project knows it’s easier said than done. An apparently infinite number of choices must be made, from the latest furniture finds to a huge array of paint hues differentiated by the tiniest increments of nuance or blush. Just refining one’s vision is a design job in itself. For pro designers, that’s where…
When two Saddle River empty-nesters decided to redo their dated, 370-square-foot master bathroom, they knew just whom to call. Diane Durocher of the eponymous firm in Ramsey had already designed their kitchen, their other bathrooms and a few rooms in their previous residence, so she was a no-brainer for the gig. Their ask? To create a modern and functional…
Inside Odyssey Athletic Center’s cardio room, the ellipticals, steppers and treadmills gleam, and in the spin room, a mural of snow-dusted mountains and evergreens sets off the rows of cycles lined up on the newly installed floor. It’s business as usual at the family-owned Waldwick gym—sort of. On May 24, New Jersey lifted capacity limits on gyms and fitness…
Spa-like serenity is always a welcome retreat, yet perhaps nowhere is the calming power of design tested more than at a birthing center. Can a place where labor pains happen really have comfort at its essential spirit? That was the challenge put before Anna Maria Mannarino, owner of an eponymous Holmdel-based design firm, as she met with Clara Surowitz,…
Patience is a virtue the Furey family has down pat. James and Pauline remodeled everything but the kitchen when they moved into their Mahwah ranch in the summer of 2017. This was a big-ticket item for a couple in their 30s expecting their first child, and the cream-toned kitchen was in great shape—just slightly outdated. “For kitchens you want…
Who could get excited about a hobby whose essence is waiting and watching? Birders, that’s who, and there are millions of them worldwide. Birding, or bird-watching, is a relaxing way to commune with nature, but it has thrilling moments too—such as when you identify one of the earth’s roughly 10,000 feathered species that’s new to you. Birds are evolutionary…
Each of us has grown in some way during the past year, but not all of us have a party to show for it. Luckily, Latoya Watt does, thanks to her best friend, Chloe Sosa-Jarrett of Hackensack, who surprised her with a 30th-birthday soirée that honored the “blooming” she had done over the past year and decade—and was intimate…
Invitations had already been printed when a Wyckoff family’s bat mitzvah festivities faced a COVID curveball, and the special day they’d dreamed of for years was suddenly off track. It was an unsettling situation for 13-year-old Rylee and her parents, Amy and Jason Fox, but they didn’t let it mean defeat. After all, some- times a detour can be…
Hours of travel separate a Maplewood family’s home from their beloved summer haunt on Nantucket Island. Yet each night in their master bedroom suite, Kit and her husband recapture the sense of calm associated with the sunsets they enjoy there. “Nantucket has always been an inspiration,” says Kit, who loves to spend summers at her parents’ home on that island…
There’s nothing an artist prizes more than light, and in the old kitchen, light was in short supply. So the Franklin Lakes homeowner, an artist trained in architecture, turned to designer Sharon Sherman of Thyme & Place Design in Wyckoff to create a kitchen for her family that was filled with light and other things the old space lacked:…
They knew what they liked, this couple with three young children. And building a new home from scratch, like the one they were building in Mendham, means you pretty much get what you want, from the layouts down to the doorknobs. But sometimes the very grandeur of one’s vision calls out for a designer’s eye to help fulfill it….
There are lots of things parents put off when they have young children, but sophisticated home style doesn’t have to be one of them. That was the view of parents Nilam and Kal as they contemplated the design of their freshly built contemporary colonial in Holmdel. “We did not want to compromise the décor of our house,” says Nilam,…
By Haley Longman. Design by Thomas Flint Landscaping. Photography by Adam Pass Photography. It all started with Instagram. Homeowner Kristen Takla and her husband decided in 2019 that they wanted to build a pool in the backyard of their Ramsey home, and she fell in love with a photo a friend had shown her of a pool with fiber-optic starlights…
