Seeing Beauty

How a visually impaired client and her interior designer transcended the ordinary
working partnership to create a stunning apartment in Fort Lee

 

 

Eileen Goff knows her way around her spacious Fort Lee co-op. After all, she’s lived there for 23 years, ever since she and her husband, sold their family home to scale back to simpler living.
     

“Most of my life, I was a person who could see. I know chartreuse from lime green, because I saw all those things. I know all those things,” says Goff, who lost her vision completely in 1992, due to a progressive eye disease. “But this isn’t a case where Maureen helped a blind lady make a nice apartment. We made every single decision together.”

 

Maureen is designer Maureen McMahon — of Interiors, designs by Maureen McMahon in Englewood — who worked closely with Goff to select every item. They started with one room and then ended up redoing the whole apartment. They traveled to New York City — just over the George Washington Bridge, one block from Goff’s apartment — many times to comb the market for lighting fixtures and furniture. They spent many nights discussing and debating details over wine and shrimp, after Goff returned from work at her job as founding director and CEO of a nonprofit human service agency called Heightened Independence and Progress www.hipcil.org, where she’s worked for 31 years. The agency’s mission is “Empowering people with disabilities to achieve independent living through outreach, advocacy and education.”

a textured life
Goff says she’s always loved being well-dressed. She opens the door to greet this reporter in elegantly tailored rich cocoa-brown pants and a beautiful blouse. “I want my home to be well-dressed, too,” she says. “It’s important to me. It makes a statement about who I am.”
     

Texture is a passion. “I love texture. Number one, it helps me see things better. And number two, it adds a richness in my mind,” says Goff.   
     

After they chose a modern Justin David beige and black upholstery for the 20-year-old sectional sofa in the living room, the two settled on copper as the accent color. “It’s unique, uplifting and warm,” says the homeowner.

 

 

Soon, with McMahon’s help, she selected copper Ultrasuede pillows with a striking grid of black leather strips crisscrossing the fabric. Then they found dramatic fired-copper artwork for the entry hall, and in time, redid the master bathroom into a symphony in copper, from the gleaming fixtures to the hammered copper vanity. Goff chose forgiving Corian rather than luxe marble for the vanity top just in case she knocked something over that could stain.  
     

“We both came up with everything together,” says Goff. “Maureen never said, ‘This is nice. You should take it.’ She wanted me to feel the textures. She described absolutely everything in detail, the color shades, the finishes, the designs.”
     

“It was extremely enjoyable for me,” says McMahon. “Eileen wanted things that were unique and beautiful. She didn’t want people to walk in and see things they had seen elsewhere.”
     

They hunted down furniture, accessories and wall coverings that have an added dimension, giving pleasure to the touch. The upholstered headboard above Goff’s bed is trimmed in soft suede, and even her jewel box is upholstered to match. The kitchen cabinet handles were updated with sleek artisan stone handles. Sumptuous leather abounds; the dining room chairs are nubby ostrich leather; the office chair luscious orange; and the sleeper bed in the guest room is smooth caramel.

knowing home by heart Goff knows every detail in every place — from the red vase by the window to the leather Crate & Barrel desk chair in the ideal shade of red to give the guest room a little punch. It’s a find she’s particularly proud of — she told McMahon she really wanted a red chair there.
     

She reaches for wineglasses in the blonde lacquer wall unit in the living room. She knows exactly what the shelves and drawers hold.
    

“I’ve always been a very independent person in my life. It’s always been very important to me. I think everyone should be self-sufficient and want to reach for the moon and get as close as possible,” says Goff. She canoes, and cross-country skied for years—healing from a broken leg last year won’t hold her back. She’s merely switching to snowshoeing for now.
    

Goff has lived on her own since her husband passed five years ago. She has a system in place that gives her a second set of eyes. Her watch has a Braille face, and she has a talking calculator. Her microwave has special Braille buttons. She knows the computer keyboard well, but has software assistance technology — an automated voice reads emails and scanned snail mail to her. She sews Braille labels into her clothing — they might say BK for black or BL for blue. She owns a car and hires a driver to take her to work.

 

“I’m a person who is blind. It’s not a bad word. But most people have never had a conversation with a person who doesn’t see,” says Goff. “The truth is, most of what you do in your life, I do in my life.”

 

“Do I know the layout of my apartment? Yes, of course I do,” says Goff. “Do I bump into things? Sometimes. You pay attention to other senses when one is lost.” Part of the redesign, for example, was to close off the apartment terrace and turn it into a home office. “I wanted to be able to sit there on a Sunday morning and feel the sun on my face and have a cup of coffee,” she says.

match made in heaven
The two women met in the 1980s, through a mutual friend. They sat next to each other at a wedding in a modern Catholic church.

 

“Maureen described the stained-glass windows to me, and the pews,” says Goff. “She told me there were tons of white roses all over the church. We never could have worked together as partners if I didn’t have trust in her. We both wanted to create a thing of beauty.”

 

“And the good thing about it is, we’re still great friends,” says McMahon.

Interiors, designs by Maureen McMahon

http://www.dpicyk.njasid.org/find_a_designer.php?d=6222_Maureen_McMahon