From Bethesda Magazine: How the voice of the Commanders and his designer wife are refreshing their home’s ‘60s groove
Bram Weinstein and Heather Golde enhanced features, added flare to their 7,000-square-foot Bethesda house
By Jennifer Barger
April 29, 2026 3:00 p.m. | Updated: April 28, 2026 4:35 p.m.
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When they moved to Bethesda from Connecticut in 2016, Heather Golde and Bram Weinstein were bewitched by a 1966 rambler they could spy from the back windows of their rental house in Bannockburn Estates. “It was basically a mid-century time capsule with a huge pool and these big windows—but it was falling apart,” says Golde, 50, the lead interior designer and owner of Fini & Martin.
In this neighborhood known for large lots and rolling hills, many people scoop up these older homes as teardowns to make space for large new houses. But once the couple talked to the owner of the groovy relic—and arranged a tour of the rundown interior in 2017—they were too charmed to consider knocking it down.
The house, which sprawled over nearly 7,000 square feet on two levels, had floor-to-ceiling windows, a retro low-slung roof, and such wild original details as a carpet-walled steam room and a basement disco room with purple shag carpet and metallic orange and purple wallpaper. The seven-bedroom, four-bathroom, two half-bathroom house—which had only two owners over half a century—hadn’t been significantly remodeled or redecorated since its construction.
“We knew we wanted to buy it to upgrade and renovate it while maintaining the integrity of this mid-century house and the scale and beauty of the neighborhood,” says Weinstein, 53, a sportscaster who works as the play-by-play announcer for the NFL’s Washington Commanders. “You could tell that this was a happy house, a party house where people had fun.”
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After some back-and-forth with the owner, who no longer lived at the property, Golde and Weinstein bought the house in 2018. The plan: to shore up the structure’s systems and windows, and then move on to larger projects such as rehabbing the awkward galley kitchen and replacing the primary bath, with its Mad Men-era sunken bathtub. “We did the bare bones we needed to move in—rebuilding a rotting stair landing, sanding the floors,” Golde says.
Though there was no working stove in the original kitchen and the large in-ground pool was full of trash, the couple and their daughter (now 16) and son (now 13) moved into the fixer-upper in September 2018. They started working on DIY projects (Golde painstakingly painted the upstairs hallway to resemble spendy dot-and-dash wallpaper) and larger tasks that required contractors. “We knew this was going to be a marathon not a sprint, and for the first few years there were so many things that needed to happen that no one would see—redoing plumbing, putting on a new roof, replacing dozens of windows,” Golde says. “But that allowed me to visualize what I really wanted.”
As the project progressed, Golde retained many of the home’s original swinging ’60s details: a 15-foot-long, wall-mounted oak buffet in the dining room, an orangey-pink stone fireplace surround and wood wall paneling in the parlor. “And I didn’t yank out much of the old brass hardware—doorknobs, powder room sink faucets—since the original owners had spared no expense,” she says.
In 2023, the couple redid the kitchen with Fulton, Maryland’s Saturnia Builders, taking down two walls to open it to the adjoining great room and dining room. Out went laminate countertops and worn parquet flooring, in came floor-to-ceiling walnut cabinets from Cuisine Idéale, a six-burner GE stove, and an outsize island wrapped in creamy porcelain slab from MSI. Golde chose a showstopping backsplash in “Mount Rainier” quartzite, a green stone spiderwebbed with brown. “It reminds me of leaves and really brings the outdoors in,” she says. A new spice cabinet is concealed behind one sliding panel of backsplash next to the stove.
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Golde updated the adjoining great room and dining area with a blend of vintage and contemporary furnishings. In the dining area, Mr. Brown London pendant lights hang over a “Bibianna” table and leather-upholstered “Halston” chairs, both from Four Hands. In the great room (not pictured) a Crate & Barrel sectional is paired with an Eames chair inherited from the previous owner. Golde reupholstered it in an earthy zigzag fabric. “Bram was dragging that chair to the dumpster and I rescued it,” Golde says.
The latest updates on the ongoing punch list: reworking the wood-paneled parlor into a family-friendly den where the couple’s daughter plays guitar and Golde hosts mahjong parties. The couple refinished the pale original wood paneling in a deep brown and furnished the space with a vintage Baker card table that came with the house, a framed antique poster of a French cancan dancer, and a cinnamon-hued “Raffiné” sofa from Crate & Barrel.
Additionally, the primary bedroom was recently given a serene pattern-forward update with textiles in a range of gray and white prints: a curvy bed frame upholstered in Ian Sanderson’s “Pyjama Stripe” and curtains and closet door insets in Mark Alexander’s “Kerala Dove.”
The house isn’t finished yet—they want to replace the primary bath and extend the back patio over the ground that holds the now-filled-in swimming pool—and Golde feels inspired to continue the transformation. “It’s such an intriguing puzzle when you look at an old house like this and try to figure out how to make it comfortable and livable for today.”
This appears in the May/June 2026 issue of Bethesda Magazine.
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Originally published at Bethesdamagazine