From a Marie Antoinette-themed room with faux python-covered walls to a monochromatic treescape mural depicting a misty morning dawn-themed hallway, designers from New York City to Greenwich unveiled their latest styles yesterday for the first-ever designer showhouse to benefit Greenwich Hospital.
A 10,000-square-foot 1928 French-manor-style mansion at 200 Stanwich Road got a complete makeover by 17 designers, a photographer and a muralist. Each designer was free to paint the walls, create moldings, bring in new furniture and paintings, redesign the windows, and even decorate the terrace to feature their work and create a new look for the traditional house.
Some of the designers made dramatic changes to their spaces. Some of the rooms of the dwelling went from family rooms to chic living spaces. The owners of the home, Richard and Ginna Kelly, have relocated while the Greenwich Designer Showhouse is being held. (more…)
Julie Mendonsa can see what other people can’t.
Mendonsa is a professional home stager. Her job is to help people who are selling their home put the best “face” on their property.
When people have lived in their house for a while, they tend to overlook its cosmetic flaws. They might no longer notice chips in the exterior paint, the overgrown shrubs in the garden or Christmas lights still hanging from the eaves. (more…)
WHEN Andrew C. Friedman, a Manhattan architect known for his elaborate (and expensive) classical residences, chose a nondescript little brick and fake-stone building in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn to redesign, he already knew the kind of urban couple he imagined there and they were very different from his usual clients.
No, this imaginary makeover was not for the people who commissioned the eight-room Park Avenue pied-à-terre that Mr. Friedman is currently working on, nor the guy with the town house who wants his new ballroom to take up an entire floor. (more…)

