A Maine Restoration Story
A midcoast farmhouse is restored to its original splendor

Brian Vanden Brink

Crossword-puzzle enthusiast Meg Barclay brings her problem-solving skills to work. A partner in the Camden-based architecture firm of Scholz and Barclay, she likens renovations to the process of decoding, quite different from designing a home from scratch. "In a way, it's more of a puzzle to solve," she says. "You want to make the fewest possible moves and you want to keep the original structure." With renovations, getting a real sense of the preexisting structure is essential. "We look to understand the history and character of the original structure and then improve upon it," says Barclay's partner and husband, John Scholz.

It helps if the original structure is as impressive and intact as this Greek Revival farmhouse in midcoast Maine. While the exact date of construction is unknown, Scholz and Barclay believe it to be about 1850, based on the style and the building materials. Originally purchased in the early twentieth century by the grandfather of one of the current owners, the home has been in the family for three generations.

"The house was marvelous," says Barclay. "So many times, with older houses, people have made all these home improvements. With this house, no one had ever done anything except add more wallpaper. All the detailing was still there: the trim moldings, the doors with the same paint jobs."

If the owner's grandfather were to return today, he would find that Scholz and Barclay have made a couple of adjustments. First, the location has changed, mostly due to the increased traffic now passing by on the nearby road. The partners advised the clients to relocate. "We told them, 'Since you need a new foundation anyway, we could just jack the house up and build farther back, on a brand new foundation,'" Barclay says. Baxter Cook House & Building Movers, based in Searsport, seamlessly relocated the house and barn about 400 feet back from the bustling road.

Scholz and Barclay also shifted the house slightly clockwise from the original, allowing for a spectacular valley view from the new screen porch. They also designed a wider connecting wing to replace the previous one, which was "fairly narrow and collapsing," according to Barclay. This former, demolished connector between kitchen and barn was a two-story building running just from the edge of the kitchen to the barn. The new connector has been widened by eight feet. It still runs the forty feet from house to barn, but now continues across the rear of the kitchen for another nineteen feet and ends in the 252 square-foot screen porch.

The barn also required extensive renovation. "It was in pretty bad shape - the sills had gone rotten and it clearly needed a new foundation," says Barclay. The new structure, reworked to serve as a performance space, is a triumph. Two-thirds of the new barn was part of the original structure, and the original ladders still stretch up to the exposed beams. Based on this particular reworking, Scholz points out that the overall renovation process adheres to several ideals of sustainability. As opposed to starting from scratch, "we didn't have to use as many new materials," he says. "For this kind of renovation, there is a lot of reusing, without decimating any new land."

Richard A. Lane Construction served as builders for the home. "They were really terrific, fussing around with an old house," says Barclay. The building was re-roofed, with new siding, sash replacements, and shutters. The year-round living space has increased by 3,183 sq. ft., more than doubling it. There are now "seasonal-use living spaces" - the entry porch, the screen porch, the non-insulated barn - where there were none before. The lower level garage now serves all the storage needs, reducing the original storage space - the attic, the connector, the barn - by 2,748 sq. ft. When the attic was converted into two bathrooms and a laundry area, the original four bedrooms became six. And while the original house had only one bathroom, the renovation added two powder rooms on the first floor and four bathrooms on the second. Scholz and Barclay also restored the large dining room fireplace.

Just as they wanted to use the barn for entertaining, the clients also planned for a big working kitchen to accommodate many people. "Where before, the kitchen was small, dark, and cramped, it now opens up and flows into the rest of the house," Barclay says. New cabinets were also installed to further update the space.

Renovating can also sometimes feel "like an archeology dig," says Barclay, a search beneath the existing surface for clues to the original structure. "When there are so many changes, you wonder what it was to start with. Often what was originally there was pretty good." With an architecture firm that knows what to look for, it's hard to go wrong. And in the end, "restoring the space brought the house back to its original beauty," says Barclay.

Puzzle solved, at least for the next 150 years.