House Beautiful documents Aditya Madiraju and Amit Shah’s move into a 5,800-square-foot farmhouse in New Jersey in 2025, after an 18-month overhaul turned a 1990s property into a family home. The project ran far past the four-to-five months they first expected, and it now houses Yana as well as Adam and Austin.
2016 to 2025
Madiraju met Amit Shah at a NYC birthday bash in 2016, and the couple married two years later in a traditional Hindu ceremony in Shah’s home state of New Jersey. By 2023, Yana had joined the family, and the home plan had shifted from a simple renovation brief to a place built around long-term use.
“Before we found this house, we considered building new from scratch,” Madiraju said. “But we fell for this house's bones immediately, both of us, on the spot.” That choice left them working with the existing structure instead of starting with a blank lot, which pushed the design toward adaptation rather than repetition.
Milan Michail and Maison Design
The couple worked with Milan Michail of Maison Design on a renovation that replaced all the flooring, resized several rooms, and knocked down walls to improve the home’s flow. The result is less about decoration than layout: the house was reworked so family movement, daily use, and the finishes all read as one system rather than separate updates.
Stone now runs through the floors, mantle faces, kitchen countertops, and a bespoke black tub in the master bath, while the sourcing reached across continents. Vanities came from Italy, prints from India, and authentic Roman clay went into the family room, giving the house a material mix that reads deliberate rather than collected by accident; for readers tracking home-design trends, House Beautiful also has a practical guide to drought-tolerant plants that fits this same low-maintenance, long-view approach: House Beautiful Lists 6 Plants for Drought Tolerance.
Adam and Austin
Madiraju said the finished house reflects more than a renovation budget and more than one style reference. “I don't chase one look or work off a single reference,” he said. “I collect things over time, sit with them, and a room feels done when it feels right, not when it checks a box on a plan.”
He added, “My husband and I are both calm and a little chaotic at once, so we wanted the house to hold both of those energies, too.” That is the clearest read on the finished home: the 18-month delay did not just stretch the timeline, it produced a house shaped around how Aditya Madiraju, Amit Shah, Yana, Adam and Austin actually live. Looking back, Madiraju put it plainly: “The existing structure forced decisions we never would have made on a blank lot, and that's a big part of why it feels so homey now.”
