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Remodeled Farmhouses

<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2> <h3>NAWN FARM</h3> City people are prone to think that the country is agreeable only during the summer months, and that winters spent there are unpleasant and dreary. This notion is fast being dispelled, as country houses are kept open longer and longer each year, and the pleasures of country week-ends during the entire winter are definitely proven. There is in reality no more delightful place to spend the long winter months than in the heart of a beautiful country. A never-ending round of interests astonishes one who has never tried it before. Each month brings a fresh phase, and it is hard to determine whether the country is at its best during the summer or winter season. There is a fascination indescribable in watching the fall of snow, the settling of flakes on the bare limbs, the transition from brown to diamond-covered branches that glisten with every motion and are often decorated with long icicles reflecting all the prismatic colors. If you have never seen this side of country life, you will find it a wonderful world, where it is intensely interesting to study the seasons in turn, note the coming and going of birds, look for the early and late flowers, watch the melting of snows and the swelling of buds in the warm spring suns. More active pleasures, too, await the adventurer in the winter country. There are so many sports to be enjoyed that one does not wonder the youth delights to come here for skating, snow-shoeing, or toboganning. What is more delightful than a sleighing party, whose destination is a remodeled farmhouse not too many miles from the city? Start the cheery fire in the huge fireplace, pile on the six-foot logs, draw your chairs nearer while you forget the outside world, and feel a glow of delight that you, too, have joined the throng who know the thrill of country life. The first thing to do when contemplating an all-the-year-round country home is to look for a house in the right location. In selecting it the problem of heating must be thought of in a different way than as that for merely summer use. Then fireplaces will amply suffice for the few cool days and chilly evenings, and no better method could be desired. But for the real cold of winter, whether for continued use or the occasional week-end, more complete heating will need to be provided. The cheapest and simplest way is undoubtedly by stoves which can be attached to the fireplace flues. But this necessitates closing up the fireplace and depriving family and guests of all the joys of the blazing logs which never seem more cheerful and hospitable than in the bitterest weather. If the house is to be used mainly for week-end parties, stoves have another serious drawback. They must be kept oiled when not in use, to prevent their rusting, and it takes nearly two days after the fire is lighted to burn the oil off. Then, when closing up the house again, the stove must be re-oiled, and this necessitates putting the fire out and waiting in the cold house until the metal is sufficiently cool to apply the treatment. The most adequate method is by hot water or steam, and for a large country house these are really the only practical ways. The expense involved will depend upon the structure of the house. In a brick or stone building, it will cost a good deal to have the pipes built into the wall. Sometimes conditions will allow them to be carried up in a closet or partition. In a frame house that has been built with deep window jambs, as was so often done in the olden times, the pipes can be hidden within this furred framework. The great objection to steam or hot-water systems in old houses, however, is the presence of the radiator, which never can be made to harmonize thoroughly with the spirit of the old building. When it is used, some attempt must be made to disguise it. If it can be made long and low and placed in front of a window, it can be treated as a window-seat with a metal grill in front. For houses of the later Georgian period, grills can be found whose designs are not at all out of keeping with the other classical details. Sometimes a radiator can be placed entirely within the furred partition, and the heat admitted into the room through paneled doors which are thrown open when it is in use. For small houses, the hot-air system is perhaps the most desirable. The registers are inconspicuous and bring no jarring note into the old-time atmosphere. The pipes require considerable overhead room in the cellar, which sometimes becomes a hard problem in the low foundations of old houses. The fact that it is difficult to drive the hot air against the wind raises a second objection, but if the furnace is placed in the corner of the house from which the cold winds blow, or even a second furnace is installed, the trouble will be largely overcome. And there is the great advantage, especially for a week-end house, that it can be started up or left at a moment's notice without trouble from water in the pipes or danger of freezing as in the hot-water systems. Whatever the method decided upon, it is an interesting work from start to finish. One feels a thrill of adventure in evoking from the home of past generations one for twentieth-century living with all the comforts and appliances necessary. But to transform an old building that has never even been intended for living purposes into a residence that is not only comfortable and suited to the owner's needs but an architectural success as well, is a still more fascinating problem. How Messrs. Killam and Hopkins have accomplished this with an old barn at Dover and kept the distinctive simplicity and atmosphere of the original building is worthy of emulation. <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/ill_036.jpg" width-obs="600" height-obs="420" alt="Nawn Farm—Front View" title="" /> Nawn Farm—Front View</div> When Mrs. Genevieve Fuller bought the Nawn Farm some three years ago, it was her intention to alter the farmhouse then on the property. Its location, however, was not entirely favorable; the house was on sloping ground in somewhat of a hollow and too near the public road. Besides this, the rooms were small and very much out of repair. On the crest of the hill was the barn, occupying a commanding position and framed in splendid old trees. The structure was found to be so stanch that it was decided to tear down the old house and convert the barn into the residence. <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/ill_037.jpg" width-obs="600" height-obs="398" alt="Rear View" title="" /> Rear View</div> The foundations were left unchanged, and an ell on the north side was added for the service portion of the building. The supports and interior divisions are all virtually unaltered. The living and dining rooms occupy the positions of the former mows, and the hall connecting them is the old passage for the wagons. Most of the original studding has been used as it stood, and the beams incased or hidden in the finish of the walls. The roof was flattened on the top, and the gables cut off, but the slope was unaltered. Wider eaves were added at a slightly different pitch, softening the lines of the roof. Doors and windows were, of course, cut anew to conform with the different usage of the building. Their position was necessarily determined somewhat by the existing supports, but they have been very happily placed, whether in groups or singly. Those of the sleeping rooms on the second floor are especially well handled; they are wide and raised well up under the overhanging roof, so that they carry out the broad low lines of the architecture. The openings of the sleeping-porches have been treated exactly as windows, their size corresponding with the apparent dimensions of the windows, and their locations determined by the same factors. They become at once an integral part of the structure instead of the unsightly excrescence which the presence of a sleeping-porch so often proves. <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/ill_038.jpg" width-obs="600" height-obs="462" alt="The Living Room" title="" /> The Living Room</div> On the first floor, the living-room occupies the entire eastern end, having exposures on three sides. This has been attractively finished in gum wood stained a dark brown, and the warm tones of natural colored grass-cloth tone the walls. An interesting treatment has been accorded the fireplace by flanking it on either side with a nook, the outer walls of which cleverly conceal parts of the old structure. In each of the recesses is a small window above the paneling and window-seat. The furnishings of the room are appropriately simple and invitingly comfortable, suggesting old-fashioned things adapted for modern uses. Especial interest is attached to the fireplace fittings; they are of hand-forged iron, wrought by the village blacksmith after designs of the owner. The andirons were made from the tires of old cart wheels, flattened and bent into shape and curled over at the top. The wood-box is of flat strips of iron interlaced. From one wing of the hall ascend stairs which are the faithful reproduction of an old Colonial design. The other part of the hall, across the southern front, is so broad and cheerful with two big windows and two glass doors opening on to the sunny loggia that it has been furnished with a davenport, tables, and chairs almost as a second living-room. The woodwork is North Carolina pine stained brown, and the walls are gray. The billiard-room back of this hall, with its attractive alcove and fireplace, is finished in fumed oak, and the walls are also gray. <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/ill_039.jpg" width-obs="600" height-obs="458" alt="" title="" /></div> <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/ill_040.jpg" width-obs="600" height-obs="446" alt="Two Views of the Dining Room" title="" /> Two Views of the Dining Room</div> Perhaps the distinction of being the most attractive room in the house can be accorded the dining-room with its Colonial white woodwork. The fireplace and the china closet, balanced on the other side by the door into the pantry, are of excellent proportions and charming detail. The mullioned panes of the china closet and the treatment of the moldings about the frame are especially interesting. On the opposite side of the room a group of three windows provides opportunity for an unusually delightful feature in the long window-box, built by the village carpenter. Its simple, sturdy lines are worthy of notice. The walls are papered in a deep cream, and the greatest simplicity maintained in the furniture and draperies. <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/ill_041.jpg" width-obs="452" height-obs="600" alt="The China Closet in the Dining Room" title="" /> The China Closet in the Dining Room</div> The service portion is well arranged both for convenience of labor and comfort of the domestics. The basement laundry leads directly into a large drying yard which was the original enclosure for the cows and is surrounded by the same wall of field stone. Up-stairs the rooms might be said to be divided into three suites, which can be practically shut off from each other: each has its own bath and sleeping-porch. In the group over the living-room there has been an ingenious solution of the structural conditions. The division of the rooms made possible by the old supports permitted a dressing-room to be placed conveniently between the two chambers, but the fireplace added in the living-room was directly below, so that the chimney would naturally cut off the outside wall. It would have been possible to construct a large fireplace in the dressing-room and allow the light to come through the chambers, but the architects evolved another scheme. The chimney was carried up on one side, providing a fireplace for one of the chambers, and a second chimney was built in the opposite corner of the dressing-room. In the space between, a window was cut, and the two flues joined directly over the window. From the outside of the building this gives a most unusual effect as there is a chimney directly over a window, having no apparent support, or even purpose. The lines of the pyramidal base conform to the slope of the roof. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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