Downsizing upgrades family’s homelife
Imagine the big smile on Beethoven’s face if he’d driven down Ridgewood Road in Maplewood early this autumn and heard joyful music flowing from the once-stolid mid-century-modern house that has been sitting grimly at the end of its driveway since l952.
Beethoven composed his famed oratorio overture, “Consecration of the House,” in 1822. Now, more than two centuries later, the Maplewood home’s new owners, Mishell and Matthew Vuolo, gathered contractors and other friends to consecrate their own dramatically reimagined house Beethoven-style, with an afternoon of festive music.
Never mind that the Vuolos’ playlist was definitely contemporary. Their objective was much the same as Beethoven’s, to use music to dedicate their house to doing good. In their case, the objective was to create a good environment for the family by simplifying their homelife and living smaller and more sustainably. They had already lived large in Short Hills, which Mishell describes as “a lovely hamlet, but we wanted to raise a family in a town that was more intimate and distinctive. I was familiar with South Orange and loved the sense of community.”
“I love design and architecture,” says Mishell Vuolo, owner of MV by Design. “My happy places are among the dust and noise of a construction site and tile store.”
She’s also created a happy place for her entire family, rehabbing an outdated old house into an elegant, ‘100 percent functional’ new home.
In 2011 Mishell went looking for a South Orange house that “wasn’t all done.” In the process, she found a friend who would change her life: Maggie Axelrod-Calister, a long-established realtor with Hearth Realty Group and resident of South Orange. House hunting together, they eventually found a circa-century-old, three-story house in South Orange that was to keep Mishell busy for the next 10 creative years.
But it was also a decade of change. Mishell’s idea of home, sweet home, was evolving. “Our house in South Orange was more than we needed. We lived in about 60 percent of the house. It didn’t make sense to have rooms in our house that we rarely used. Every space needed to have a purpose. The house needed to be 100 percent functional.”
Also, that home was “all house” with little that “blends seamlessly, through all four seasons, with the outdoor space.”
Downsizing was “a conscious decision and a joint decision,” Mishell says. “I didn’t want a formal living room or formal dining room anymore,” Mishell says. “Out with the fancy dishes! Out with formal dinners. My vision was to downsize and live only with things that serve a purpose.” Her first step had been to organize a big estate sale in which she sold or gave away nearly everything from the family’s former lifestyle.
Her family agreed to the downsizing, “not just in terms of square footage, but also in terms of material things,” Mishell says. “Still, we needed space for the essentials, like sneakers, field hockey sticks, paper towels, and volleyballs. There had to be a place for everything.”
A tough, two-pronged assignment, yes. But Mishell knew what she wanted in a home and how to achieve it. Not only has she been designing houses for more than 25 years, she heads her own firm, MV by Design, with residential and commercial clients across the country. Her specialty is designing and managing the construction of projects.
“I previously owned a construction company in Las Vegas, giving me an edge when working with contractors and understanding where you can push and pull design,” she says.
Moving to the East, Mishell says she soon realized she “needed to reinvent myself.” That took her back to school at Parsons School of Design, in New York, and into an intense design job, staging “visuals” at Ralph Lauren’s trend-setting flagship store on Madison Avenue at night, when the store was closed.
After spending 10 years rethinking the South Orange house, Mishell and her attorney husband, Matt, had a new vision for their homelife: it had to include a pool. So again they called on Maggie, who had become a close friend as well as real estate advisor. Biding time while they looked together for a house to fit Mishell and Matthew’s evolving lifestyle, the Vuolo family, now including two daughters and two dogs, crowded into a twobedroom apartment in South Orange. It was a long year while Mishell and Maggie waited for the just-so house to come on the market. In 2022 they finally found it on Ridgewood Road.
Built in the early ‘50s, evocative of Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier’s nononsense sculptural style, the Ridgewood Road house has always stood out against its neighborhood of traditional colonial and farmhouse-style homes. No wonder, as Maggie says, “It’s the house everyone wanted to get invited to.”
Now, after a year-plus in Mishell’s inspired hands, there’s a lot more to see. And also a lot of improvements behind the scenes.
“While some people want f lowers for Mother’s Day, in 2022 I wanted a demo crew,” Mishell reports.
In keeping with her determination to make the house environmentally relevant, she included improvements such as radiant floor heating, foam insulation, and high efficiency windows. “Everything in the house was given careful consideration,” Mishell points out. Other design details include recessed baseboards, hidden door hinges, flush-mount doors and windows, and special attention paid to lighting fixtures. “Lighting is truly the jewelry of the home,” she says. “I want the house to feel curated, with everything feeling special, like a jewelry box.”
To create that feeling, Mishell orchestrated multiple organic materials, such as the black metal that “elevates the floating staircase but is softened by the warmth of white oak. The translucent ribbed glass cabinet doors act as a backdrop for the oversized blue lava quartzite island with grays, greens, and gold swirling like a painting that only Mother Nature can make.”
Art also underscores the highly individualistic personality that’s expressed throughout the house. Mishell delights especially in one small painting she tracked down in London after first meeting the artist in upstate New York. “I was sightseeing and smelled oil paint, so I followed my nose and came upon the artist whose work I’d already admired.”
Mishell describes her meticulous makeover as “a labor of love. It wasn’t uncommon to find me working on the second-floor loft on an oversized piece of tile on two sawhorses in the dead of winter with no heat,” she says.
“Every home I design I put my heart in it.” That goes for the outside, too. Making the utmost of the home’s 250-feet-deep lot, they built a backyard oasis as a modern inground pool and spa surrounded by natural marble and exotic woods. The modern pool house adjacent to the pool “adds value, comfort, and sophistication to the property,” Mishell says. The lot’s primary function is to serve as a “full-scale entertainment space that will keep our kids at home. It’s like us to have 20 kids in our backyard any afternoon.”
With floor-to-ceiling accordion glass doors and an open floor plan, Mishell has integrated indoor and outdoor living spaces to “blur the boundaries between the interior and exterior.” As she says, “This biophilic design allows for abundant natural light, fresh air, and a harmonious relationship with the outdoors.”
“Harmonious” is also the right word for the musical poolside party that consecrated the Vuolos’ new home in midSeptember. It was Maggie’s idea, inspired, she says, by the “supportive, appreciative” relationship that had developed between client and realtor over the years. “I wanted to support and celebrate Mishell’s talent and expertise.” She says she also was struck by the very concept of women supporting women, of “women being better together by supporting each other in life and work.”
So she urged Mishell to open her newly redesigned home so “others could see how gifted Mishell is as a designer.” Moreover, Maggie offered her recently formed all-women band, “Broadband,” to play at the party. Never mind that there was no Beethoven on the program.
The party playlist included a merry medley by the three Broadband musicians: Maggie, who first found her musical chops singing and playing ukulele at her daughter’s wedding (“What was I thinking!”); Mary Amato, artist, singer, teacher, and writer of award-winning fiction for children and young adult readers, who teaches ukulele, guitar and songwriting at In Tune in Maplewood; and Tricia Tunstall, teacher, writer, 33-year Maplewood resident who has served as Maplewood’s Director of Arts and Culture and co-founder of the Maplewood Arts Council. The party’s theme was “Better Together,” but it seems likely that the music Broadband played that September afternoon included a subtle counter theme borrowed from the classic ballad, “Home, Sweet Home.”
ADVICE FROM THE DESIGN PRO
“Your home should hug you when you walk in the door”– Mishell Vuolo, Founder of MV by Design
The most important design consideration in any room is how you want that room to make you feel.
The quickest and most economical way to add drama to a room is paint.
When painting a room, always consider the 5th wall (ceiling). Rarely do I paint a ceiling white with color on the walls.
Don’t keep Aunt Suzie’s piece just because it was given to you. If it doesn’t bring you joy, donate it.
Lighting is truly the jewelry of your home. Always include good lighting in the budget. 6. A home should feel like it has evolved and not been designed in a day.
As a journalist covering interior design for many years, Rose Bennett Gilbert has prowled around thousands of other people's homes. What Mishell Vuolo has done with a stodgy old Maplewood house "knocked her socks off!"
Comments