Thanks to an imaginative redesign, a couple’s cookie-cutter condo becomes a home of utter individuality.
Written by Brian Scott Lipton
Design by Sheila Rich
Photography by Lauren Hagerstrom
“It was their first time really planning a house together,” says Monmouth Beach-based interior designer Sheila Rich of her clients, a couple of empty-nesters she helped to fashion a distinctive, 2,500-square-foot Monroe condominium in a 55+ “active adult” community. “This is where they’ll spend their senior years, so they knew they wanted a home that would be comfortable for them but laid out so they could entertain both small and large groups.”
The condo uses a basic blueprint of some of the other models in the community—it’s a one-level home with a great room, a library, a master bedroom, a guest bedroom and 2½ bathrooms—but Rich enlarged some of the rooms to create additional space. And even though she used some of the standard building materials provided by Toll Brothers, Rich made significant changes wherever she and her clients deemed it appropriate.
“The models were completely carpeted, but they didn’t like that,” says Rich. “So we began the design process by installing hardwood flooring throughout the house, and then I used a wide variety of area rugs, whose scale and proportion were informed by the room sizes, to delineate differ-ent spaces in each room. Since there were no walls in the great room, I had to use these rugs and the furniture as my dividers.”
Another challenge Rich faced was the home’s 10-foot-high ceilings. “I had to find ways of warming up the space without enclosing it, and it was a vital to create a sense of volume,” she adds. “That’s why I chose some of the furniture. For example, the large sectional sofa in the great room, by Bentley Churchill, is higher and deeper than many other sofas. Not only is it perfectly scaled to the space, effectively defining the room, but it also creates a much-needed, subtle separation between the great room and the kitchen. Plus, like everything else in the home, it needed to have a timeless contemporary motif with soft casual elegance and a subtle, edgy appeal.”
Lighting helps fulfill a special need throughout the house, says Rich. “Everything is bottom-heavy in a space like this, so you have to create volume, scale and proportion through unusual lighting, which includes the unique crystal chandelier with clear glass drops in the great room, the lamp with black string over a white linen drum with blown glass balls above and below it in the breakfast area, and even the extra-tall, custom-made lamps that sit on the end tables in the master bedroom.”
For eating at home, the couple primarily sits around the extra-large, white marble-topped island in a pair of counter chairs in the breakfast area that are covered in an easy-to-care-for black-and-white fabric (which is also used for the chairs around the round steel-and-wood breakfast table). Unsurprisingly, it is the most popular room in the house.
Rich is equally pleased with the results she achieved in both the library, which one enters through double-glass black doors, and the enlarged master bedroom. “For the bedroom, I opted for romantic colors of soft ivory and beige, which I paired with shades of silver and gray,” she notes. Conversely, Rich made a bolder statement with the striking, textured wallcovering she chose for the guest bathroom. “I wanted something very fluid and dramatic, but not too strong,” she says.
Perhaps the biggest reason Rich put so many special touches into her design was her clients’ desire to have their home look completely different from any of their neighbors’ places. “They didn’t know exactly how to get to that place,” she says. “Fortunately, I did.”