Everyday Elegance

Personal details and elegant flourishes create a perfect balance of sophisticated and inviting.

- Margie Monin Dombrowski

FAMILY-FRIENDLY DESIGN AND LUXURY DO NOT USUALLY MIX, but they cozily coexist at the home of Missy Walsh. Set on 42 acres of land in Potomac, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C., the 13,000-square-foot, four-story colonial, where Missy and her husband raised their three sons for the past decade, was renovated extensively to fit their family’s lifestyle.

“We took about a third of the house away and rebuilt it,” says Missy, a photographer, stylist and former interior designer, who owns the website Love Your Perch. The process took about two years, and now they have a more spacious family room, updated bathrooms and finishes, a basketball court in the basement and an office suite for her husband.

For additional curb appeal, they refaced the exterior with new clapboard and raised the roof by about two feet because the house looked a little squatty. “The pitch of the roof sat on top of the second-floor windows. With the renovation, the house got a lot wider, and the additional height gave it more proportion,” Missy says.