Some people design their dream house in one fell swoop; others take longer to feather their nests. This four-bedroom, 6,500-square-foot Great Falls home took 12 years.
“Our goal was consistent,” says McLean-based interior designer Maria Galiani. “My clients are family-oriented. They love to travel, cook, and entertain. They wanted a welcoming house that always felt comfortable for them and their guests, while reflecting their personalities and interests.”
The homeowners — a married couple with grown children — were drawn to Great Falls. The husband worked in Tysons. The wife, meanwhile, had an area friend who, as fate would have it, is Galiani’s sister-in-law. Fruitful introductions ensued.
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“We were in and out of Route 7 all the time,” the wife, who chose to remain anonymous, says. “Initially, we lived in the 1970s ranch house located on the back of the property. … When this property was for sale in 2005, we jumped on it.”
Five years after purchasing the home, the couple decided to tear down the ranch house and build a new house to meet their growing family’s needs and lifestyle.
“At the time, we looked at renovating our existing home, but it just didn’t make sense,” the home owner continued. “There were lots of rules and regulations about expanding. We continued to meet with a lot of area builders before finally choosing to work with Sekas Homes. They looked at our initial plans and modified them for us to build a brick-and-stone French manor house.”
Sekas Homes positioned the new house closer to the front of the property to improve access to the street and then repurposed the area where the old ranch house stood into a swimming pool.
“They initially needed help selecting bathroom tiles, paint colors, flooring finishes,” Galiani says of her first round of designs. “The wife wanted a warm, European-country feel — a rustic touch but still chic. … For flooring, we went with hickory floors in a mid-tone, with color variations, to give the home an informal feel.”
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Though the home’s original palette consisted mostly of neutral colors, the house’s matriarch brought with her visions of purple, her favorite color. So, six years later, when Galiani was approached again, this time to upgrade the living and dining rooms, the lavender-tinged Elephant Gray by Benjamin Moore was a logical choice.
Tapping into a passion for interior architecture, Galiani afterward decided to enhance the dining room by creating a custom mantel feature wall.
“Our inspiration began with a piece of architectural salvage — an antique ornamental zinc window from the Perry flats building in Toledo, Ohio,” Galiani says. “I always try to bring unique, one-of-a-kind pieces to my projects to make a difference. … Martha Stewart apparently bought one, too!”
The Beaux-Arts window was designed with a mirror in place of glass and was integrated into a mantle above the fireplace surround. Galiani then used the feature as the foundation for what was to become an equally striking wall of cast stone, with a mounted pair of long mirrors on either side of the fireplace for symmetry.
“The window was so decorative that we wanted to give it a clean background,” added Galiani.
Next, Galiani incorporated elegant but unfussy furnishings in the dining area, including slipper dining chairs. Trim workings, like the custom cornices, were then added to both dining and living rooms for touches of formality.
Both rooms feature cased openings, and they face each other across the front hall. Having a similar palette and other shared elements, therefore, was important for continuity. Galiani accomplished this by using the same geometric-patterned linen draperies and matching grid-patterned hide rugs.
Most recently, renovations to the home’s primary bedroom were completed in 2021. Prior to the redesign, the room boasted 489 square feet of space, with angled ceiling lines at either end that emulated the rooflines. There were also two small closets at the end of a bland hallway.
“This was a huge transformation,” says Galiani. “The eaves visually cramped the space, even though it was a large room. It was important to square them off to clean up all those lines and angles. In the process, we lost 40 square feet but added that square footage back as storage.”
On one side of the room, the square footage that was lost became an expansive walk-in closet, a space that was aided by Galiani’s decision to turn the two smaller his-and-her closets into one. On the other side of the room, Galiani added a feature wall with integrated storage, a TV and a gas fireplace. In front, elegant furnishings await cozy in-home evenings.
Of course, with Galiani, a focus on aesthetics always factors in. Such an approach is evident by the fact that the previously uninspiring tray ceiling now appears embellished with a striking custom design that includes mitered box beams stained with a dark brown finish.
“I wanted the ceiling to look like it had a purposeful design,” she said of what is surely the icing on this cake redesign. “We gave the overall space for better usage and intentional architecture. That’s the way we like to design.”
Whether the homeowners will embark on future design projects remains to be seen, but for now, it’s safe to say they are delighted with their home.
This story originally ran in our January issue. For more stories like this, subscribe to our monthly magazine.