Amazingly, we first met and started working with Melissa 25 years ago!  During that time she has helped us rethink and redesign nearly every room in our home.  What has always stood out to us is her playful, unexpected, and dynamic mix of materials, textures, and patterns; introducing us to successful ideas we would never have imagined.  And that is just one aspect of Melissa’s magic. Another is her ability to personalize each space, reimagining ways to highlight lifelong collections, like inherited antiques. Because these things were special to us, they became special to her.  

She has always involved us in every step of the process, helping us explore and appreciate the beauty of our house and guiding us to think more deeply about how we wanted to feel in each space.  After living in our ever-evolving and beautiful home for 22 years and becoming empty nesters, we were finally ready to renovate our first floor. In this project, Melissa’s many other talents came to the fore. She understood the bigger challenges of room configuration and placement, and she showed us that our home could be transformed into something completely different, a first floor that meets our current needs. For us, the experience became more than a typical renovation, as we embraced new ways of thinking about our home and our future in it without expanding our home’s footprint!  The result was a wholesale reworking of our first floor – including swapping the locations of our kitchen, dining and family rooms in the process. 

Melissa helped us see the possibility of the big picture while keeping us grounded in the smaller details.  Her way of finding an anchor item for each room, a focal point or as she calls it a road map, whether it be a piece of furniture carpet, or artwork, led to her bringing in a piece of wallpaper that she thought would be perfect for our ceiling.  We had no idea that we could put wallpaper on our ceiling and that such a thing could be so stunning!  Throughout the project, we noticed how each detail was carefully thought through as much for aesthetics and beauty as for function and utility.  These discussions were meaningful, always demonstrating Melissa’s ability to listen to our needs and respect our opinions while helping us imagine what the right choice would be.  

We truly value Melissa’s vision and outlook; she is joyous, thoughtful and genuinely cares about shining a light on who we are. We couldn’t be happier with our house or our partnership with Melissa and her team!

Abby and Stuart