Upstate House

EvolveD Interiors Design + Build’s Dramatic Contemporary Renovation in Saugerties

By Evolved Interiors  |  Summer 2025   |  House Feature

Designer Mari Mulshenock doesn’t shrink in the face of design challenges—she relishes them. “EvolveD Interiors is a full service, concept-to-completion firm,” explains Mulshenock, the founder and lead designer at EvolveD Interiors Design & Build in Woodstock. “Our team is not just decorators, we’re a design-build firm that oversees everything. What we do is more like reimagining architecture, but with an eye toward what it will be like to actually live in a space every day.”

With over 30 years of design experience, Mulshenock has developed a keen eye for a property’s hidden potential. She and her team often take structures down to the studs and then rebuild, with the owner’s unique requirements in mind. Along the way, she oversees every detail—developing plans, producing vision boards, collaborating with homeowners, and vetting and managing construction crews to ensure they make the most of a property’s potential. “Details can make or break a project’s success,” she says. “I shake people’s hands on the way in, and then shake their hands again on the way out. From inception through completion, the client can be involved as little or as much as they want to be.”

In 2023, when the redesign of a dilapidated Saugerties property came across her drawing board, she wasn’t daunted by the project’s demands. “The owners actually already lived next door and knew the property well,” says Mulshenock, of the ramshackle rambler. “They saw the home’s redesign as an opportunity to create something really special.”

However, fixing it up would need a lot of work. Previous owners had torn off the cedar shake siding and were using it as firewood. Inside, the rooms were dark and choppy, divided by an overabundance of interior walls. “It was like a warren,” says Mulshenock. “It was all little rooms and small spaces. There was no light and no flow.”

Still, Mulshenock saw great bones. While walking through the home, she’d caught sight of something else—a glimmer of design potential that could serve as the restoration’s North Star. “There was a two-story, see-through fireplace—it was almost a Midcentury Modern-inspired element,” she remembers. “I saw the fireplace and knew it was going to become the centerpiece of the redesign.”

Seamless Living in a Sylvan Setting

Over the course of just 11 months, Mulshenock transformed the neglected home into a sleek 3,000-square-foot contemporary, nestled in a bucolic six-acre setting. To realize her vision, she took the home down to its shell, leaving in place the original salvageable features. “First, we opened everything up by knocking down some interior and exterior walls,” she says. “After that, we took the home down to the studs, fully reimaging the floor plan.”

On the main floor, Mulshenock envisioned an open concept living room and kitchen space that offered more natural flow between the rooms. The design took full advantage of the surrounding views. She paid special attention to emphasizing the beauty of the revamped see-through fireplace, one of the home’s only pre-existing notable features. To balance the rooms on either side, she bumped out the living room area, adding a 12-by-20-foot extension. To heighten the living room’s dramatic effect, Mulshenock incorporated a 22-foot vaulted ceiling and added exposed pine beams crafted by Woodstock Wood. Three walls of generously proportioned Pella windows with custom black grilles blur the line between the living room and the home’s streamside setting. “You can hear the water all the time,” says Mulshenock. “It’s just magical.”

By raising the existing kitchen ceiling, Mulshenock exposed the chimney column to the roof. Now the home’s focal point, she recovered the fireplace with a charcoal black ledgestone. “The fireplace is now the first thing you see when you walk inside,” she explains. “It has really become the heart of the home. It just draws you right in.”

Reimagining the home’s boxy kitchen was also key. As with the adjacent living room, Mulshenock wanted to expand the room to encourage flow. Here, instead of remaining confined by the home’s original footprint, she cleverly captured space from an oversized laundry room, carving out an alcove for the refrigerator and surrounding Shaker cabinetry. She reinvented the remaining laundry space as a new powder room, finishing the walls with a distinctive black-and-white wallpaper selected by the homeowner.

A suite of GE Cafe appliances in matte white further streamlines the visual flow from living room to kitchen. Mulshenock collaborated with the homeowner, selecting classic stone counters in a contrasting black leathered finish. She also added a kitchen island in the center of the newly expanded footprint, maximizing counter space and creating an additional eating area. Sliding doors lead from the kitchen to a covered porch. She added heating and raised the floor for easy access. The newly revamped screened porch is capped with a soaring vaulted roof featuring pine tongue and groove.

The ground floor’s overhaul was equally impressive. Like the main level, the space was carved up into smaller rooms. The home’s main entrance was previously cramped, opening directly into a small hallway and staircase that lead upstairs to the rest of the house. “There was a wall dividing it from the rest of the ground level,” she explains. “It was a dark space with unrealized potential.”

After knocking down the interior walls to create one large, flowing lounge, Mulshenock relocated the front door to a side of the house that offered a more inviting entryway and added a Rustica glass-paneled door. Inside, a new custom wood staircase was also crafted by Woodstock Wood, with metal railings by Matthew Weinberger that complement the airy redesign.  

 

Mulshenock discovered the home’s second floor also had untapped potential. “I realized that if we raised the attic roof, we could create a bonus space for the owners,” she says. The room, now outfitted as an office and music studio, enjoys uninterrupted views of the property’s lush acreage. A new staircase leading from the kitchen connects the bonus room to the rest of the home while still preserving privacy on the second floor. 

Mulshenock also refined the home’s exterior design, giving the structure a serene curb appeal. Instead of replacing the dilapidated cedar shake, she opted for crisp white board-and-batten siding that instantly draws the eyes to the clean, newly simplified lines of the structure even from a distance. A black standing-seam metal roof coordinates with the black trimmed windows. Sliding Pella glass doors lead to a newly constructed Zuri decking system overlooking the adjacent pond and stream.

Recently, working with Rich Vizzini of the Wolf Team Catskills at Corcoran Country Living, the owners decided to sell the property and handed the keys over to a proud new owner. For Mulshenock, satisfaction of a job well done not only came from the property’s quick sell-time: it is knowing she and her team had the vision to transform the once-dilapidated house into a welcoming home that the new owners would enjoy for years to come. “It is so rewarding,” she says, “When someone tells me years later how much they love living in their home.”

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