Aditya Madiraju and Amit Shah have moved into the New Jersey farmhouse they spent 18 months remaking, settling into a 5,800-square-foot home that now reflects the family they have built since they met in 2016. The move marks the end of a renovation that began with a fixer-upper from the 1990s and ended with a house shaped around their daughter, Yana, and their dogs, Adam and Austin.
The timing matters because the pair did not arrive at this home quickly or by chance. They met at a New York City birthday bash in 2016, married two years later in a traditional Hindu ceremony in Shah’s home state of New Jersey, and welcomed Yana in 2023. By 2025, the farmhouse was finally ready, and the wait had already outlasted the job they first expected to take four to five months.
That stretch became part of the story of the house. Madiraju and Shah worked with Milan Michail of Maison Design to replace all the flooring, resize several rooms, knock down walls, and improve the flow of the home. The renovation also pulled in materials from far beyond New Jersey: vanities from Italy, storied prints from India, and authentic Roman clay for the family room. Stonework now runs through the floors, mantle faces, kitchen countertops, and a bespoke black tub in the master bath, giving the home a weight and continuity that were impossible to miss once the walls came down.
The couple had briefly considered building from scratch, but the structure they found changed that plan. What started as a practical decision became a creative one, with the existing bones pushing choices they would never have made on an empty lot. That is also why the home carries Indian influence without feeling fixed to one idea: it mixes custom detail with an opulent finish, and it was assembled piece by piece rather than imposed all at once.
In the end, the longer timeline seems to have done as much for the house as the design itself. The farmhouse is no longer just a renovation completed in 2025; it is a family home that had to be rethought room by room before it could feel settled, and the unfinished answer now is not whether it looks right, but how much more the couple will change once they actually live in it.
