Hitting Refresh
Sometimes retro can be cool, but that’s not how Melissa Buksbaum felt about the interior of the 1944 Colonial she shares with her husband, Gregg, and their two young children in Donaldson Run. “The décor used to be straight out of a Colonial Williamsburg magazine,” she says. “The bathrooms had plush maroon carpet!”
Turns out carpeting wasn’t the only problem. A 1990s kitchen addition on the back of the house also left much to be desired. “Think blue-and-white checkered floors, navy wallpaper, dark granite counters and [dark-stained] cabinets,” says interior decorator Carrie Miller, whom the Buksbaums hired in 2015 to give their traditional home a face-lift.
Most of the designer’s changes were cosmetic, not structural. For economy, Miller kept the kitchen’s layout and most of its existing cabinets, relying on new finishes to achieve a dramatic transformation. The old cabinets were given new life with fresh paint and hand-rubbed antique-bronze hardware. The island was extended for additional seating, its mottled granite countertop swapped out for a lighter marble surface. And the kitchen’s dated floors were replaced with new tiles laid in a herringbone pattern.
