The Story Behind The Little Palace

In 2003, Lisa Mitchell moved into a beautiful 1930s Tudor with an impressive—and neglected—ribbon mahogany bar. Seeing its potential led her to enroll in a basic refinishing program at the now-defunct YMCA Craft League in New York City.

That first project opened the door to a practice that has continued for more than two decades. Refinishing and reimagining furniture became a pursuit whenever time allowed, gradually leading to more complicated projects and a deeper understanding of color, materials, construction, and finish.

A few years later, Lisa was selected for a competitive grant program that funded advanced refinishing study at the Fashion Institute of Technology. There, she studied color theory, custom color blending, pigments, dyes, and architectural finishing techniques.

The projects kept coming. Furniture was refinished and upholstered, fabric was sewn, things were painted, repaired, altered, and given new lives. Today, Lisa lives in a 100-year-old converted bank barn, one of the remaining buildings from a grand estate in Connecticut, with plenty of projects of its own.

The Little Palace grew out of all of this. More than a furniture or refinishing business, it is rooted in the idea that people should have options: to make something their own, to fix what they already have, and to see the possibility in things that others might overlook.

Want it. Fix it. Love it.