LOCATION

Amatanth, PA

This new farm house was built to replace a century old family homestead that burned down in a tragic, all consuming fire in the winter of 2003. The new house was designed to replace the original house not in form but in spirit and function. With an artist in the household, the house design needed to include a large art studio and commanding views in all directions to take advantage of the wonderful light throughout the day for landscape painting. The house was situated, in nearly the same spot as the original farmhouse, with every effort made to maintain and protect the mature elm and oak trees and the rear yard fruit trees around the house that were not destroyed by the original fire.

The design was created with full accessibility in mind. The custom mahogany 4 foot wide front door welcomes you into a light filled central stair hall which distributes you to the coat hall, powder room, guest suite, master bedroom suite and lofted great room which houses the living dining areas with adjacent open plan kitchen. The stair hall leads you to the second floor guest bedroom suite, bunk room for the kids and the art studio with both covered and open decks for painting, reading or sunning.

The living room features an enormous 4 foot by 5 foot Eldorado Stone fireplace with a slab pear mantle that was cut from an old tree lost to the fire that destroyed the original house. There are 2 custom fabricated 20m arm black iron chandeliers hanging from the cathedral ceiling and a full wall of glass flanking the fireplace to the east which bring in the morning light. There is a 40 foot wide open porch with arts and crafts stucco chimney with random placed Pewabic Pottery storey tiles. Several porch swings that were rescued from the original house hang here for evening story time with the grandchildren.

The large family style kitchen features a large open counter to the dining area with custom fabricated iron brackets featuring frogs, lizards and grass hoppers. Off the kitchen is a full laundry room and pantry. Thru the kitchen to the western sunset is a screened dining porch with a fireplace for those lovely evening dinners when the temperature dips just a little below comfort level. This screened porch is shared by the Master bedroom suite.

The Master bedroom suite features a large walk in closet, heated stone tiled Master bathroom with walk-in shower and linen closet. The bedroom has a modest wood burning fireplace adjacent to the whirlpool bathtub bay window niche to the west, for that romantic wind down at the end of the day. There is a screened porch to the south and an open porch to the north depending on your mood for enjoying the views.

The second floor art studio is a light filled lofted space with south facing windows, west covered deck and north open deck, each space with the best commanding views of the farm and the swimming pond across the field to the west. From here the painter in the house can see for miles in any direction and has adjacent farms, extended valley views or mountain views to choose as her subject.

The exterior metal roof echoes the original house while the new double insulated aluminum clad wood windows and doors and cement horizontal plank siding and shingles provide a virtually maintenance free shell to protect this wonderful new homestead which will be enjoyed by generations to come.