Enter interior designer Tali Roth. “When I drove up to the house for the first time, I immediately said, ‘Hey, can we paint it black?’” she remembers. The answer was a resounding yes and created a snowball effect of monochromatic choices: white walls, steel accents, blond wood floors. They were aesthetic decisions, but practical ones as well. “It’s a lot harder to design a layered, colorful English countryside place on a budget,” explains Roth. “It’s much easier to make minimalist silhouettes and neutral materials appear luxe, and I didn’t want there to be a single space that looked like we forgot about it.”
But before the cottage underwent a top-to-bottom, one-year-long remodel, the family lived with it as is on the weekends for six months. “It let us get a feel for how we would use it,” says Woo, and having all her relatives over for Thanksgiving signaled another must-have: more square footage. Cousins, parents, and siblings quickly ran out of places to sit, never mind sleep.
Day one post-renovation: a smear of red lipstick on the brand-new cream bouclé sectional. Susan Woo momentarily reconsidered the black and white palette in her Hudson Valley, New York, getaway. “I did not hide my heart palpitations,” jokes the mom of two and founder of General Issue, a men’s line of casualwear.
It was admittedly a risky choice. Woo and her husband, Jeff Mayer, who works in hotel finance, share the Cape Cod–style cottage in Clinton Corners with their two children, Jackson (5) and Evan (2). But the young parents, whose primary home base is Dumbo, Brooklyn, are modernists at heart—they were willing to deal with the spills for a tone-on-tone look.
When the couple purchased the home in 2018, it had charming curb appeal—the shingled house is perched up on a hill at the end of a long, meandering driveway—but inside, the kitchen was a dated dark brown, the floors were a honey hue straight out of the ’80s, and the bathrooms hadn’t been updated in decades. “We knew we were going to renovate from the start,” says Woo.
Bronson Sofa, Croft House; Industrial Chandelier, Workstead; Multi-Leg Table by Jaime Hayon, 1stDibs.
HOME TOUR
It May Not Look Like It, But This Cottage’s Kitchen Was a Budget Affair
A modern-day monochrome palette ties
it all together.
Photography by Chris Mottalini
Exteriors by Nick Glimenakis
Words by Gabrielle Savoie
Styling by Kate Berry
August 6, 2021
