Take a Tour of Martha Plimpton's Victorian Brooklyn Home — Including Her 'Dream Kitchen!'

Martha Plimpton describes her four-bedroom home in Brooklyn as a “farmhouse in the middle of the city.”

“It’s peaceful and it’s comfortable,” The Real O’Neals star tells PEOPLE. “I want people to feel at home—like this is a place to have good conversations, eat good food and be with an interesting mix of people from all different walks of life.”

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But it didn’t always have such a homey feel. After moving out of the same Manhattan apartment she’d lived in her entire life and purchasing her new home in 2013, the actress spent a year renovating. Once new pipes, plumbing and electrical wiring were installed, Plimpton, 45, tackled her favorite room: the eat-in kitchen.

“For years I cooked in a tiny closet in Manhattan, so when I bought this house, I really wanted to make my dream kitchen and I did,” she says of the space made up of white cabinets and countertops. “I really love it.”

There, Plimpton likes to make roasts in her antique-looking ILVE stove and cook Indian food. “And I like to entertain,” she says. “I have dinner parties here a lot. My friends come over and we drink wine and cook dinner together. Sometimes we don’t eat until midnight.”

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Part of making the place her own also involved decorating with an interesting array of art and furniture. Her collection includes a dining room chair purchased from the Bernie Madoff estate sale and a crescent-shaped table from the set of her Broadway show, A Delicate Balance.

“Everything has significance to me. There’s nothing in my house that I bought to make it look a certain way,” she says. “I don’t have a particular style really. I just like having an eclectic sort of mess around me. In an odd way, the chaos makes me feel more comfortable.”

—Ana Calderone, @anacalderone