Hi, Welcome to The No Makeup Home Tour and to my house (AKA The Woodhouse Lodge), If this is your first-time visiting my site, thanks for stopping by. I’m an interior designer, blogger and enthusiastic maker of things… and I’m pretty sure that I’ve taken this no make up thing WAY too far! Here’s the deal, a little over a year ago my husband and I moved from Brooklyn to a lodge in Upstate NY that we have been renovating for the last twelve months. We live in a second floor apartment at the lodge, and later this month we will be opening our doors for the first time to guests. We are in the final push to get this place pulled together. While I feel that we’ve made a lot of progress the lodge is not exactly ready for its big debut. If you are interested in seeing where the renovations began you can check out a blog post about the lounge from last year, but that is not what you are here for, this is an opportunity to peel back the veil of perfection and take a real unstyled look around.
The Lounge
We are calling the first-floor kitchen and living space The Lounge, this is a space open to our guest for shared meals, sitting around the fireplace and generally relaxing. The first-floor lobby has a mostly open floor plan, and from this wider angle, you can start to get a hint of the state of things beyond the tight crop of the first photo. The space, just beyond the kitchen island is where a dining table and chairs should be. Hopefully, those will arrive soon, until then we are embracing this open space as a staging area for our tools.
Yikes!!! Right? Have you quit reading? As this pile of tools indicates, we are still working.
#nomakeup #eventhecatdisapproves
The Kitchen
The kitchen is one of my favorite parts of the lounge and the first thing you see when you come in the door. We sill need to add and subtract a few items here. On the additions list is a pair of matching bar stools, and we need to remove the stack of lumber on the floor. The light that is above the kitchen island belongs in the bathroom but is here for now until our island pendant arrives, USPS willing I think is coming today!!!
In case you are curious, we are using the Shelby Mod Pendant from Schoolhouse Electric above the island, and the wall sconces are the Alabax Small Sconce, also from Schoolhouse Electric.
The countertops are soapstone that we got from Polycor. We cut the countertops on-site with the help of a wet saw; I’ll be posting more about the evolution of this kitchen soon. The short story is that we rearranged and repurposed the cabinet from the original kitchen. I painted them and swapped out the hardware, and if you look closely, you will see a few places where I still need to finish painting them. I used semigloss Behr paint in Nightclub. I love the off black/blue of the color against the pure black of the stone, knobs and sink faucets. The potential to style the big open shelves is exciting to me; hopefully, I’ll be sharing some of those images soon.
The Lounge
Just beyond the kitchen area, is the lounge zone. Try to ignore the painter’s tape on the floor. Like I said we are in the thick of wrapping this renovation up. I’m not 100 percent sure about the furniture arrangement around that central collum, but it’s closer to being right than it has ever been. Ideally, I would love to reposition this massive collum, but for structural and budget reasons we couldn’t do it. Maybe we will revisit it later on, or I might give it the same treatment that I gave the green wall in the entry.
I love how this turned out. The ceilings in the lobby are low and I think this treatment elongated the short walls and added much-needed interests.
Here is what it looked like before. Those big vents are an eyesore, right? The texture that the trim adds distracts your eye from them. Sometimes you have to make a move that is louder than the problem to distract from it.
I might do the same for our weird collum situation. What do you guys think?
The Builtins and The Fireplace
The seating arrangement in this room was a bit of a head-scratcher! What I did after a lot of trial and error was make some builtin shelving/seating/wood storage on either side of the fireplace. In previous arrangements, the space to the right and left of the hearth was awkward, no matter what I tried. No configuration of furniture could hold it’s own against that massive fireplace. The other challenge on this wall are the short windows; I think this new builtin frames them nicely and make them feel intentional. As soon as I finish writing my The No Makeup Home Tour post, you can bet, I’ll be busy sanding and painting those bad boys.
I like the light tone of the wood against the dark American Plaster wall treatment that Damien from Tricolor Studio NYC (@tricolorstudionyc) did for us in March. For paint on the builtins, I’m going with Farrow and Ball Setting Plaster in a semi-gloss finish. It’s an off pink color that is relatively similar to the color of the wood. I also have big plans for cushions on this bench so stay tuned!
I still need the right rug for this central seating area, but I love how it is coming together. From this side, that column is still annoying! I’m on the lookout for the right piece of art or decor to finish it off. Above the air vent on the column is an outlet for a wall sconce. I have another one of the Alabax Small Sconces. Unfortunately, the electrical box here is a rectangle, the type you would use for a plug so connecting the new sconce is slightly more complicated than I had initially anticipated. The electrical outlet is an example of a detail that I would probably photoshop out, but in the name of keeping it real, I left that s**** in because this is The No Makeup Home Tour!
The Second Floor AKA Our Apartment
This space has not changed much since my One Room Challenge. The fundamental changes are the vintage Courboursie sofa and chair. We scored them a couple of months ago and decided to use them upstairs and migrate some of the chairs form the original arrangement to the first-floor lounge. This area is our living room; the downstairs space will be open to guests.
As you can see the kitchen table upstairs also doubles as a workspace, this will probably change once we get our second-floor kitchen up and running.
This is the current state of the kitchen if you can call it that. All the plumbing is in place we just need to add in the cabinets. I’m looking forward to tackling this project once we wrap up the guest areas of the lodge.
Our Bedroom
This is my bedroom. It’s a cool space; I love the pine ceilings, I think we will leave them unpainted. The room also has some challenges, like the closet doors that flank the bed. The spacing is not ideal for a queen sized bed and two nightstands. Because I know that I need to move the doors for this space to function well I have done very little to the room. The two things I have done are to hang the ceiling fixture and attach the Moroccan wedding blanket to the wall as a makeshift headboard. The wall colors and the nightstands came with the place. I don’t love them, but over the last year, we have had bigger fish to fry. This is another space I’m looking forward to tackling once we get the lodge open.
Outside
Like I said we are in the final push to get open and porch painting and pallets of shingles have overtaken our ordinarily dreamy garden and seating area. Our roofers are finishing tomorrow (rain gods willing), and I’m happy to report that the porch painting is complete.

Thanks so much for sticking it out through the good the bad and the ugly. The Woodhouse Lodge will be open for business in two weeks, and if all this behind the scenes talk hasn’t scared you away, we would love for you to visit us. We have ten privet guest rooms (not pictured in this post) that are ready and waiting to host you and your upstate NY getaway. You can book a room here.
Be sure an check out the rest of the No Makeup Home Tours; I’ll link to them below. And a special thanks to Kyla from House Of Hipster for keeping it real and organizing the tour!
House of Hipsters // Room for Tuesday // Anita Yokota // copycatchic // Making it Lovely // Bigger Than The Three Of Us // Oleander + Palm // Yellow Brick Home // The Makerista // Centered by Design // Francois et Moi // House of Brinson // Erica Reitman // brittanyMakes // Anne Sage
Would you consider adding bookcases to either side of that colUmm? That would elongate the wall space you have for art etc behind the couch and give you a better anchor for An entry table. it is already a visual block, widening it would help it read better with the horizontal fireplace and give it a purpose.
I love all the work you have done – that kitchen is so amazing!
A bookshelf is a great idea! Thanks 🙏🏻
* column 🤦🏼♀️
Loving seeing your progress and the real side of all the hard work!!!
Thanks lady… we still have a few things to work out but it’s coming together.
i need to book a trip to the lodge immeds! it’s been so much darn fun to see this whole place come together. Can’t wait to visit soon!
Thanks lady! Yes please come visit…❤️❤️
I so wish you could have seen my face when I scrolled to the bottom and got the full outside view of the lodge…holy hannah it looks sooooooooo amazing! Inside and out! Thanks for being a part of the no makeup home tour!
You’re making me want to book a stay at the lodge!! I can’t wait until it’s finished. loved seeing a realistic view of the renovation and progress. it was so fun to see how you used the soapstone- same material, yet it looks totally different than mine! amazing job! xox
Thanks, lady, I can’t wait to read your post! it’s nice to keep it real, and PLEASE come visit!
I love the way you disguised the vents with the green paint and my vote would be to do it again on the side of the column where the drop-leaf table is currentLy. I would replace the drop-leaf with a demi-lune table/shelf bracket exactly the width of the column and deep and sturdy enough to hold a guest book. I would remove the plants and stools and instead add mirroRs floor to CEILING cut exactly to size On the sides of the column. You dont want it to feel more of a barrier than it already is and wIth eactly the right table on the face of it you can have it make More senSe in the room. WEll done with this amazing project!
I like your idea a lot, i have given a lot of thought to mirrors… THanks : )
The kitchen looks absolutely amazing. That veined soapstone is killer and I love, love, love the divided shelves and how you fabricated everything out of that amazing slab. Major kitchen inspiration for my future renovation. thanks for sharing!
HI thanks so much, yes at some point I definitely will!
Wow… I adore the ceilings in your bedroom! Keep them, keep them, Love. I’m so inspired by your style and how you pull things together. I can see it all coming together.
Have loved following your renovation progress! Would you consider sharing a floor plan of the lodge at some point?
(AND just a quick FYI that there is a typo on http://www.thewoodhouselodge.com – the text on the room keys photo currently reads “here for your to enjoy” instead of “here for you to enjoy”)
Lovely tour and your home looks gorgeous. I’m in love with your kitchen, who would know that dark will be so stylish in the kitchen. Love it!
Thanks rose! I’m a big fan of dark shades 🖤
It looks beautiful! Where is the Chesterfield sofa from? gorgeous!
Hi, it’s from Perigold. We love it!
Beautiful! Where are your matching kitchen bar stools from?
they are from a National Public Seating. its a school supply company : )