The roofline stayed. Almost nothing else did.
The county record has a house on this acre since 1965, a one-bedroom, one-bath house on a slab that last changed hands in the summer of 2024. What stands here now is that house's gambrel roofline and very little else. Lauren Wesley Spear, a New York designer and builder with fifteen years of commercial and residential work behind her, whose own Catskills cabin, the Highland Bungalow, ran in Dwell in 2020, took the house on as what the brokerage's own account calls a near complete rebuild, essentially a new build inside an old silhouette.
The gambrel still sets the shape from the road: a gable end faced in natural wood under a dark standing-seam metal roof, the siding a mix of cedar and Hardie board, a two-level deck stepping down toward a brook. Inside, the entry and the main living space open to double height, with tall windows and skylights that pull the woods in. Oak floors run through, quarry tile and cedar carry the palette, and a wood-burning Nova stove sits on a raised tile hearth under RBW and Noguchi Akari lighting.
Furniture that became the house
The detail worth the drive is the millwork. A collection of vintage furniture sourced in Hudson was pulled apart and rebuilt by Braxton Alexander, whose custom furniture and millwork studio is in Kerhonkson itself, into the kitchen island, the bathroom vanities, the built-ins and the closet systems, and those pieces stay with the property. Three king-sized bedrooms and two and a half baths, including a lower-level suite with its own entrance; the primary has a skylit soaking tub, heated floors and a built-in wardrobe. Every system is new: six-zone Daikin heat pumps, spray-foam insulation, well, septic and 200-amp service. Mohonk and Minnewaska are close, and the house sits on a private wooded road halfway up the Shawangunk Ridge.
