It was a blank slate—a designer’s dream, and the perfect new start for Sean and Jin Xu, their 15-year-old daughter and their 11-year-old son. The Xus bought the new build in Upper Saddle River in 2021 and enlisted Wyckoff-based designer Jennifer Pacca to make it the family home they’d long envisioned. “They wanted a contemporary […]
Grand Kitchen For GrandKids
Berkeley Heights empty-nesters Judi and Matt Sills faced a challenge: how to make their home more welcoming for their expanding family. With both grown sons living several hours away, they wanted to make weekend and holiday visits more enticing, especially for their twin toddler granddaughters. Their gathering place had traditionally been the kitchen, but that […]
Triumph Of Illusion
Looks can be deceiving, and that’s exactly what an Asbury Park designer counted on as he worked to conquer aesthetic flaws in a 125-year Rumson colonial with a bit of illusion. True, this reno was largely comfort-driven—a decision born during COVID. Today the couple are soon to be empty nesters, with the youngest son off […]
Goodbye, Brown!
It wasn’t that they didn’t like their house. The owners of a 3,500-square-foot center-hall colonial in Branchburg loved their home, which they’d been living in for 30 years. After a major redesign 20 years ago, they’d been content with their traditional style, which the wife describes as “Tuscan with many shades of brown and gold.” […]
Bonus Basement
When neighbor Kelley Drukker asked Sharon L. Sherman of Thyme & Place Design in Wyckoff about converting a basement room into an office, the designer was happy to oblige. “When I first walked down the steps, it was like entering a time capsule,” says Sherman of Drukker’s basement, which runs the length and width of […]