When it came time for Carole Radziwill to officially to hit refresh on her Soho apartment, the results ended up being nothing short of glamorous. And now the The Real Housewives of New York City writer is showing off the finished product in the pages of Architectural Digest, including her famous tiger-print couch that was recently refinished in a French blue fabric. (You can see the before, above.)

“I didn’t want to do something super glam that would compete with the tiger,” she says in the magazine. Carol inherited the couch from her mother-in-law, Lee Radziwill. “I’ve had it in my life for 27 years. Not only is it a great couch—the most gorgeous, the most comfortable—it has a lot of memories soaked into it," she said. “Well, I don’t so much feel sentimental for the couch as responsible for it. It’s a piece of history."

ArchDigest.com/Gieves Anderson 

ArchDigest.com/Gieves Anderson 

The couch would then serve as the impetus for Carole and interior designer John Bossard to renovate her entire downtown pad, which includes references to her life on RHONY in the form of a bronze apple. “That was the beginning of what snowballed into a total apartment makeover,” she said of the home, which was also designed with her two cats and dog in mind.

As for her enviable home, Carole noted: “I had this idea that I was going to have dinner parties, but you know what, I’m not that girl. I don’t love having a lot of people over. I’m the girl who is going to go home, shut her door, and be in solitude, surrounded by beautiful things.”

Check out more from Carole about her marriage to Anthony Radziwill, below.