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AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



August, 19 13 



This delightful cottage is one of the most successful recent experiments in remodeled farmhouses 



Making a Summer Home Out of an Old Farmhouse 



By Jessie Tarbox Beals 

 Photographs by the Author 



MONG the hills of New England many an 

 abandoned farmhouse in recent years has 

 been turned into a quaint Summer home. 

 City folk who have wanted to try their 

 hand at the remodeling of old buildings and 

 beautifying the attractive grounds usually 



associated with them have thus come into the possession of 

 a comfortable as well as delightfully located country place 

 at a minimum of expense. 



An old frame structure of this character in a charming 

 New Hampshire Valley near the new Summer "White 

 House" at Cornish, has undergone a complete transforma- 

 tion at the hands of a New York artist. It had been built, 

 a number of years earlier, in a natural setting of quiet 

 beauty, with a meadow sloping 

 gently in front, and pasture and 

 woodland in the rear. Near where 

 the house stood were several pop- 

 lar and apple trees, partly shutting 

 out the gaze of the few travelers 

 on the country road, and affording 

 an almost ideal haven for a secluded 

 and peaceful dwelling. 



It was a long, low, one-story farm- 

 house, with a high gabled roof. 

 No adornment had been attempted 

 by the original occupants, and out- 



wardly the appearance of the house was not prepossessing. 

 There were no porches, and the front door led into a small 

 hall, off of which opened several well-lighted rooms. There 

 was no cellar, although the house had foundations firmly 

 built. Little had been done in the way of grading the front 

 yard, and virtually the aspect of the ground was little 

 changed from the primeval clearing given it in Revolu- 

 tionary days. 



The first thing to be done was to carefully examine the 

 old building and determine just what repairs and altera- 

 tions were necessary to put the entire structure in good 

 condition. The problem of the interior was to plan every 

 step in advance, so that there would be no needless expense 

 through experimental building and tearing down again. 



A sketch was made showing the 

 arrangement of the rooms as they 

 were, and this the architect used as 

 the basis for studying out a plan of 

 reconstruction. Each room was 

 measured and located on the dia- 

 gram, and carefully drawn to the 

 scale of one quarter of an inch to 

 the foot. Every window, door and 

 closet was shown on the drawing. 



Then dotted lines were introduced 



on the sketch illustrating the di- 



The original house mensions of the new rooms. Space 



