An Old Vermont Farmhouse is Transformed into a Welcoming Family Retreat

The Vermont vacation house originally ended at the stone chimney, so designer Elizabeth Benedict and architect Brian Hamor created an addition at the back of the home with a spacious mudroom that uses the old chimney as a wall.

The front doors open to a foyer that holds an epoxy-topped table on a base of reclaimed wood and a pair of sturdy bronze benches. “All winter that table has a jigsaw puzzle on it that we chip away at,” Benedict says.

The new barn holds a cozy family room and, on the upper level, a pool table. The wood trim on the stairway was made to look old by Pauline Curtiss of Patina Designs.

he designer, along with Woody (in the lead) and Gus, enjoys a snowy day at her refurbished farmhouse.

Woody Hayes, named for the famous Ohio State University football coach, relaxes in the mudroom, where each family member has a space for outdoor gear.

The living room is painted Benjamin Moore Aegean Teal.Double doors open to what Benedict calls an “indoor-outdoor room” that connects the barn and the house, and the artwork is by JP Kilkenny.

Low-backed dining chairs from Four Hands and host chairs from Essentials for Living surround a table that seats twelve.

The kitchen island’s deep teal Wood-Mode cabinets sparked the home’s palette.

When Benedict and her husband are home alone, they often spend time in the cozy den above the mudroom; Benedict’s friend Mally Skok designed the ottoman-coffee table for Dowel.

The primary bedroom is a peaceful oasis with its board-and-batten paneling and lux Matouk bedding.

An antique cabinet from Belgium in the barn’s billiard room holds a number of curiosities, including a collection of old National Geographic magazines.

The bunk room, with its trio of triple bunks, is a favorite spot for visiting cousins.

Updating a Vermont Home for Family Gatherings

As soon as Elizabeth Benedict saw the rambling old farmhouse on twenty-one mountainside acres in Stowe, Vermont, she knew it would make the perfect getaway for her family.

The house had seen better days, to be sure. It wasn’t just that the decor was frozen in the late 1980s. As a designer, Benedict had the vision to see past the matching florals covering walls and furniture and hanging at windows. Unfortunately, as she and architect Brian Hamor discovered when they took acloser look, the structure needed some serious refurbishing. “It was a total disaster,” Benedict says. “There was a lot of rot. There were beehives in the walls and the substrate was deteriorating.”

She and Hamor took everything back to the studs and started over, replacing walls, windows, the roof, and the clapboard siding. The beautiful old stone fireplaces and chimneys needed some restoration, but Benedict insisted on salvaging as much of
the original stone as possible.

Smart Design and Thoughtful Additions for a Modern Family Retreat

While the dwelling’s footprint remained essentially the same, Hamor drew up a design that
replaced the doghouse dormers with shed dormers and moved bedrooms from the back of the house to the front where they could take advantage of mountain views. He also enlarged windows wherever he could. “What I try to do as an architect is to make windows facing the view or the sun as big as possible to bring the daylight far into the interior,” he says. “In a place like this, you want to be part of the environment.”

Additions to the house include a mudroom at one end, and, at the other, an attached barn with a great room for entertaining and a bunk room for overnight guests. At just under 10,000 square feet, the house now has six bedrooms in addition to the nine beds in the bunk room. “We have four kids, and my husband is one of six,” Benedict says. “We imagine a big family in the future. We don’t want anyone to have to stay
in hotels.”

Most materials are new, including the floors of engineered French white oak, but Benedict found a treasure trove of old beams at a New Hampshire salvage yard. “We used them throughout the house to keep it from looking too new,” she explains.

A Cohesive Interior Design Focused on Comfort and Views

Restoration complete, Benedict turned her attention to the interior design, creating a color palette of calming white accented with deep teal. “I’m always preaching cohesive design where you come in and out of a color palette, so this color is repeated throughout the house,” the designer says. She kept furniture profiles low, both to keep the focus on the views and to make ceilings feel higher. And of course, she outfitted sofas and chairs in performance fabrics and laid down indoor-outdoor rugs. “If the dogs come in with muddy paws or someone has wet ski boots, I don’t worry about it,” she says.

Until Benedict came along, the old house had been on and off the market for several years. It took someone special to see its innate warmth and personality, and to know that a little—well, a lot—of TLC would make it shine again.

Project Team
Architecture: Hamor Architecture Associates
Interior design: Elizabeth Home Decor & Design
Landscape design: Knauf Landscape Architecture