![]() ![]() So we had to build a relatively straight, level house around a crooked barn frame. “There was not one nail holding it together it was just posts with wooden pegs. “This was a 200-plus-year-old barn, so understandably, everything was slightly crooked,” he admits. Peter Raposa of PJR Construction built the envelope around that historic framework and dealt with the repercussions of time. “We didn’t know it at the time, but we were cutting edge.” “People think we’re crazy, but we’re connected to this place,” says Jeff. It only took a week to assemble the barn, but more than a year to complete the surrounding house. “This was a 200-plus-year-old barn, so understandably, everything was slightly crooked.” Then, one cold, snowy winter day two years ago, Durkin’s crew arrived to erect the barn’s bones, and the Anthonys’ retirement dream started to become a reality. They even used doll furniture to make sure everything fit. While the Anthonys waited for their Colonial castoff to be shipped to Rhode Island, Durkin created a tabletop version of the house for the couple to play with. ![]() “The bark was taken to the tannery to make leather, while the farmers took the wood left behind to make barns and houses.” Hemlock, Durkin notes, was more valued for its bark than its wood. That’s one tree, cut down, hauled out by an ox and hand-cut in a straight line, then built on-site.” “It’s very unusual to have one stretch of wood that long. “These are the original heavy rafters - long, 40-foot beams that run the length of the building,” he continues. “But they had to tilt the post over to accommodate it - hence the canted queen post barn. “Instead of pitching all the loose hay into the loft by hand, farmers used a hay hook,” explains Kevin Durkin of Heritage Restorations. This canted queen post frame with a large second-story loft and windowed cupola happened to be in the company’s storage facility in Waco. ![]() So they enlisted Heritage Restorations in Texas to find just the right one. While the inside of the home dates to around 1800, the old structure wasn’t insulated, so the couple set it within a modern shell so that insulation could be added around the exterior without disrupting the rugged, hand-hewn surfaces within.Īlthough the building was originally built in Ontario, Canada, neither Stasia, the owner of Exquisite Events in Newport, nor Jeff, a former partner of a Boston-based wealth management firm, were inclined to wander the Canadian woods looking for an old barn that might make a nice home. “This is our retirement house, so we wanted something small and unique,” says Jeff Anthony of the 1,800-square-foot house in Portsmouth. Yet this structure is as solid as the bedrock beneath it thanks to the early-American craftsmen who used wooden pegs to secure the framework for this beautifully bucolic abode. Nor are there any 2x4s, bricks or steel girders. There’s nary a nail holding together Stasia and Jeff Anthony’s new house. ![]()
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