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A farm’s past, is a family’s future

Lincoln resident helps transform Carlisle home for ‘This Old House’

By Maureen O’Connell
STAFF WRITER

The small, Greek revival house on Concord Road in Carlisle scared many buyers away. The two-bedroom house, connected to a working barn by a small ell, was a reminder of the town’s past, but few could see a future there.

It sat on the market for a year and a half, waiting for the right family to come along and give it the TLC it sorely needed.

Then along came This Old House.

The popular PBS home improvement show was celebrating its 25th anniversary, and searching for a property truly worthy of a silver anniversary project. After 25 years of working with homeowners — many right here in New England — to turn old homes into dream homes, This Old House was ready to purchase a home of its own, and really put together a home one could call the “All American Dream.”

The “dream” was found at the corner of South Street.

When the This Old House team found the home, it was in poor condition inside and out, and the working barn’s floor­boards had all but rotted out, said Kevin O’Connor, host of the PBS show.

The barn with the rotting floor was what sold the team on the property.

“It’s a fantastic barn that captured all of our imaginations,” said O’Connor. This Old House took advantage of Carlisle’s zoning laws, which encourage homeowners to use barns as living space, provided the outside of the barn is kept looking like a barn. These zoning laws are aimed to keep Carlisle’s rural character in tact, as the town has grown from an agricultural community to a bedroom community of Boston.

O’Connor said the barn allowed This Old House to more than double the size of the home. The home that once had 3,000 square feet of living space now has more than 6,000. To achieve this, an addition was made to the rear of the original home, and the barn was used to create a family room, sitting area, and two bedrooms.

This Old House demolished the “ell,” a long, narrow section of the house that connected the original house to the barn. A new ell was built in its place, containing a formal dining room, kitchen, breakfast nook, and entry area. The focus was taken away from the original front door of the home, and those entering are now directed to a door in the rebuilt ell.

O’Connor said the object of the Carlisle project was to create a home that fit the lifestyle of a modern family.

“We all grew up in living rooms with furniture with plas­tic covers on it,” said O’Connor. “We created a kitchen, an informal living room, all places that are important to how people live in the 21st Century.”

To create the 21st Century home while keeping with New England traditions, This Old House got help from several area designers.

Those coming in the new entrance, where a one car garage once stood, are welcomed by bright red walls and exposed beams, complemented by curtains made from fabrics by the esteemed designer to the English upper class, David Hicks. The room was designed by Lincoln resident and the Good House Shop of Concord’s Mally Skok, a South African native who said she admired the fab­rics of Hicks as a child in Johan­nesburg, South Africa.

“I have always loved and respected the way that David Hicks managed to bridge the gap between classic and contempo­rary interiors,” said Skok.

The Hicks fabrics used in the Carlisle home’s entryway have a light background, with bright colored flowers that look as though they were taken from a child’s drawing. The red of the walls are captured almost per­fectly in the colors of the petals. Antique William and Mary chairs are upholstered with another Hicks fabric, and on the wall hangs a picture of a barn, to con­nect the entryway to the home’s roots.

“I love to combine the old and traditional with new and exciting products,” said Skok. ‘Adding an amusing, final layer of seemingly unrelated new and antique objects is my favorite part of the project.”

Another Concord designer, Hilary Bovey of Bovey Steers Design Group, created a break­fast nook off the kitchen. The hexagon-shaped room is par­tially surrounded by windows which allow the morning light and the natural beauty of the home’s backyard to shine through. The windows are treated with leaf appliquéd sheers that frame the view of the backyard garden, designed by Bovey’s husband and business partner Tony Steers.

But perhaps the most notice­able part of the room is the large dragonfly made of moss topiary; suspended over the table.

“We brought the garden into the room,” said Bovey. “(It’s) as if he’s flown in for breakfast.”

Under the table, Bovey Steers stayed with the hexagonal ­shape and created an octagon-shaped rug of greens and yel­lows to compliment the yellow tinted polycarbonate chairs. The table was dressed with a com­bination of pewter and stoneware.

Steers’s window treatments have been featured on This Old House before, but the couple was excited to be a part of the Carlisle home project, said Steers.

“We were very moved by it, because they had some high profile designers from Boston and New York,” said Steers.

Bovey was interviewed for on-air segments that will air later in the PBS series. “This Old House was great to work for,” said Steers. “They’re incredibly professional, and a fun project,” said Steers. Behind the old barn door, which has been kept intact to preserve the outside character of the property, a door leads you to another entryway, designed by Kathleen Kennedy and Ruth Piper, of Kathleen K. Kennedy Associates of Concord.

Kennedy said the goal was to make the entryway from the barn door a “cozy, welcoming spot.” Using soft greens and browns and a combination of old and new items, Kennedy said the style is “transitional,” to mark the structure’s transformation from a barn into living space.

“I have pictures of what the space looked like when we first saw it,” said Kennedy. “It was nothing, it was gutted.”

Kennedy said she met with designer Eric Cohler, who designed the living area in the old barn, and wanted the entry­way to compliment the larger living space.

“It was oriented to the back yard,” said Kennedy. “So I decided the color should be green.”

The small sitting area is inside the barn door, and Kennedy made sure to have a relaxing sit­ting space for not only humans, but Fido as well. A small dog bed was tucked under a side table next to the chair.

Off the seating area is a small powder room, also designed by Kennedy. The beams of the for­mer livestock living space were left when the powder room was designed, and Kennedy said those beams were the driving force behind the final design. An ivory-colored wallpaper with green, stenciled pineapples adorns the walls. “I don’t use all that much wallpaper,” said Kennedy. “But I didn’t feel I could achieve the effect from paint or fabric on the wall. Wallpaper just seemed right. The color of the back­ground makes it look like it has been there for a long time – that’s the appeal.”

For Kennedy, the best part of working on the 25th anniversary house was the scholarship that has been started to help future interior designers and construction engineers. Furnishings and decor from the This Old House Carlisle project will be auctioned to benefit the newly-formed scholarship fund.

Encouraging future designers and tradesman has been an important part of the This Old House 25th anniversary celebration. Four apprentices from Minuteman Regional High School worked with the This Old House team, including master carpenter Norm Abrams and general contractor Tom Silva of Lexington.

“It’s really fun that the kids were there,” said Kennedy. “To see them interacting with Tom Silva and Richard Trethewey was great.”  The Carlisle This Old House show house will be open April 15 through May 29, Tuesday through Friday 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., and Saturdays and Sun; days from 9 a.m. to 7p.m. Tickets are available from Ticket-master, and are $28. For more information, visit www.thisoldhouse.com.