We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Eileen O’Dea. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Eileen below.
Alright, Eileen thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?
The most meaningful work I’ve done has been restoring five historic homes in Cleveland, with one more currently underway. Before this, I barely knew Cleveland, but I have completely fallen in love with it. It is such a beautiful, historic city, full of extraordinary old homes that are still accessible enough to buy, restore, and bring back to life.
We don’t cut corners. Every house is treated as though it is one we would want to live in ourselves, and by the time we finish, I never want to leave. We restore original floors to their former beauty, rework layouts by adding or removing walls so the homes function for modern life, and then layer in the details that make them feel special: limewash, Roman clay, beautiful materials, color, texture, and rooms with their own personality.
These projects have also stretched me in ways I never expected. You arrive, something inevitably goes wrong, and you learn to pivot, solve it, and keep moving. Finding the right tradespeople was our steepest learning curve, but now that we have a wonderful team, we can really fly.
Cleveland has become this incredible creative playground for me. Each house gives me room to experiment with specialty finishes and to be imaginative in every single room, while also honoring the history that was already there. Five down..and I would love to restore fifty more.
Eileen, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I’m Eileen O’Dea, founder of The Wooden Palate, my specialty-finishes practice, and one half of Studio E&R, which I run with my husband, Ryan. Across all of those businesses, the through line is the same: creating homes that feel deeply personal, layered, beautiful, and alive.
The Wooden Palate began with handmade cutting boards and wooden objects. I loved the idea that something as everyday as a cutting board could be beautiful enough to leave out on your counter, made from incredible wood, thoughtfully designed, and built to last for years. That love of materials naturally expanded into interiors.
Today, Studio E&R is where Ryan and I design and build custom furniture, architectural details, floors, ceilings, staircases, doors, mantels, and the pieces that give a home its soul. Through my specialty-finishes practice, I work with limewash, Roman clay, and decorative wall finishes that bring softness, movement, depth, and warmth to a space. And through our home-restoration company in Cleveland, we restore historic houses with the same care and imagination we would bring to our own home.
I’ve always been drawn to making things with my hands, whether that was cooking, woodworking, restoring an old home, or transforming a room with color and texture. My path has never been especially linear, but every version of my life has led me closer to the work I do now.
A large part of what I do is help clients move beyond a home that feels generic, cold, or unfinished. Sometimes that means reimagining an entire room; sometimes it means a custom table, a restored floor, a vintage piece, or simply choosing the right finish for the walls. I am always thinking about how a space feels when you walk into it, the light, the texture, the materials, the way old and new pieces live together, and how a home can reflect the people who live there rather than looking like everyone else’s.
What sets us apart is that we are very hands-on and very invested. We do not approach a project as a collection of trends or a formula. We care about craftsmanship, but we also care about emotion. We want rooms to have character, to feel collected over time, a little unexpected, and completely specific to the people who live there. We are not afraid of color, texture, patina, or imperfection—the things that make a home feel human.
I am especially proud of the historic homes we have restored in Cleveland through. We have completed four and are working on another, and each one has taught me something new. We restore original floors, rework layouts for modern life, add custom details, and layer in finishes and materials that honor the history of the house while making it feel fresh and livable. Those projects have stretched every creative and practical muscle I have. They have taught me how to problem-solve, pivot, build a team, trust my instincts, and keep going when the answer is not immediately obvious.
The biggest thing I want people to know about my work is that I believe beauty matters. A home does not need to be perfect, expensive, or overly precious to be meaningful. It should tell a story. It should make you feel something. It should hold your life beautifully, and ideally, it should make you happy every time you walk through the door.
What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?
I think society can best support artists and creatives by recognizing that creative work is real work—and that it has value long before it becomes a product, a brand, or something easily monetized.
Artists need time, space, fair pay, and the freedom to experiment. So much of the work that eventually looks effortless or successful is built through years of trying things, failing, learning, and making work that may not have an immediate commercial purpose. Supporting that process matters.
On a practical level, that means hiring artists, buying original work when you can, crediting people properly, paying them fairly and on time, and not expecting creative labor to be free simply because someone loves what they do. It also means supporting local makers, small galleries, independent bookstores, music venues, theaters, and the small businesses that give creative communities a place to gather and grow.
I also think we need to make room for more beauty, curiosity, and individuality in everyday life. Not everything has to be optimized, fast, or mass-produced. A thriving creative ecosystem comes from people being encouraged to make things that are personal, strange, useful, beautiful, or simply joyful—and from the rest of us valuing those things enough to support them.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
Resilience, for me, has meant learning how to keep going through the parts of running a creative business that no one sees.
From the outside, woodworking and restoration can look very romantic. People see beautiful materials, historic homes, finished rooms, and the joy of making something with your hands. But behind the scenes, we have been through some incredibly difficult seasons. On large construction projects, when one thing goes wrong, everyone can get pulled into the fallout. We have faced legal challenges, financial pressure, and moments when it felt almost impossible to see how we would get through them.
The hardest part is that life does not stop while you are trying to recover. You still have employees to pay, insurance, rent, mortgages, materials, and all of the responsibilities that come with keeping a business alive. We have never had outside investors or a financial safety net. Everything we have built has come from the work itself, from taking the next job, making the next piece, and continuing to show up.
There have been times when we have had to rebuild from the ashes, more than once. Each time, we have had to find a way to regroup, protect the people who depend on us, and keep creating even when we were exhausted or scared.
I am proud that we did not give up. Those experiences made us more careful, more resourceful, and more determined. They also gave me a much deeper appreciation for the businesses and creative people who continue to make beautiful things despite how hard it can be behind the scenes.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.thewoodenpalate.com
- Instagram: thewoodenpalate
- Other: TikTok
Thewoodenpalate
