almost home The couple built a three-story house on Long Beach Island’s Brant Beach as an eventual yearround residence. Meanwhile, it’s the perfect place to enjoy the outdoor life.
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Text by Leslie Garisto Pfaff Design by Donna and Victoria Grimes Photography by Lisa Russman
A beach house can be a getaway, a sanctuary, a gathering place for friends and family. For a pair of empty nesters who built their dream beach house on a grassy Brant Beach dune, it would be all these things and, eventually, one more: their primary residence. Given that multiplicity of purposes, the home’s interior designers, Donna and Victoria Grimes—who worked with the owners from the planning stage onward—faced a special challenge: how to create a space that would say “escape” and “home” in the same breath. “Beach houses have to be practical,” says Donna Grimes, whose offices are in Ship’s Bottom on Long Beach Island. “But if it’s going to end up being your primary resi-