A New England barn with a refined approach to rustic design

It was a case of right place, right time for Mike and Becky Goss when the barn next to their 19th-century Connecticut farmhouse came up for sale. This plot offered an opportunity to commission a newbuild, providing the extra space that they needed and allowing them to embrace a more modern aesthetic.

Today, as you walk across the gravel drive from the original farmhouse to the new building, there is an intentional gear shift. The farmhouse is made up of small, intimate rooms, but the new barn soars, with an interior height of nearly nine metres from the ground floor to the roof peak. Becky, who owns antiques, art and found objects store The Flat in Westport, Connecticut, credits growing up in old houses as a guiding influence when she was designing the barn's interiors. As both a shop owner and a shopper, she has honed her ability to mix the old with the new: 'We wanted the barn to have a feeling of history, but with its own unique style. Now, when we feel like a different vibe, we just walk over from the house to the barn.'

On the ground floor, a huge double-sided fireplace separates the dining and sitting areas, acting as a semi-divider between the two. The chandelier over the wooden table, ‘Broken Ice’ by artist Deborah Thomas, was the first thing Becky bought for the project and one of the few contemporary items in the house. She is a magpie when it comes to gathering ideas and pieces, and credits a fellow shopkeeper with the idea for the terrazzo travertine floor in the kitchen and bathroom, 'They'd used it in an old clapboard house and I remember thinking, wow. that is unusual, I'd like to do that too.'

Pots of geraniums on a tablecloth in Robert Kime's 'Lilac Lamp' on bastian linen brighten this area of the great room.

Dean Hearne

It was Becky's trips for work to London and holidays there that exposed her to British fabrics and decoration. 'I got hooked,' she explains. 'And Jon made sure that, if we had a reference to something traditionally rustic - like horizontal cladding - it was also refined. In the end, having a shop was helpful, because I can try out a lot of things.'

They are enthusiastic hosts, and Mike has a bar at the end of the dining room, designed by the architect and aptly nicknamed 'The Onion'. This is set off by a 19th-century Italian oil painting and a 20th-century photograph of a man holding an onion, both bought at Robert Kime in London. Flatweave rugs define the two seating areas: one is the inviting spot created in front of the fireplace, with two vintage Otto Schulz sofas covered in shearling and a Roger Capron coffee table; the other is for gathering round the television, which is hidden in an antique Northern Italian painted cupboard. The kitchen is sized for preparing meals on a small scale and is tucked away behind a sliding wooden door in a corner of the dining area, which playfully suggests an outhouse, as does its sloping roof with rustic, reclaimed, hand-hewn hardwood beams.

Upstairs, a mezzanine is put to work - literally - as flexible office space for the family or a sitting area for guests, with an upholstered banquette, an old Swedish pine table and a vintage Edward Wormley chair for Dunbar, reupholstered in linen and shearling. At one end of this area is the main bedroom, painted a terracotta colour inspired by a trip to Italy. At the other end, a children's playroom and nursery is large enough for grandchildren's sleepovers and indoor games.

Deborah Thomas's ‘Broken Ice’ chandelier hangs above a Frances Palmer terracotta pedestal bowl on an old French farmhouse table teamed with antique European painted chairs from The Flat in the dining room. A vintage rug echoes the tones of the 19th-century Italian oil painting from Robert Kime.

Dean Hearne

The couple are longtime collectors. Mike retired from a career in private equity and is now fully engaged in the art trade, including a stint at Sotheby's as chief financial officer. He and Becky enjoy the scale of the barn's walls, which are large enough to accommodate paintings that the farmhouse, with its low ceilings, cannot. Becky describes mixing a Milton Avery and a Rufino Tamayo with the large Italian landscape in the dining room as giving us an opportunity to introduce colour on the textured white stucco walls in the main room!

There is the art of the landscape outside, too, which is an important component of this project led by landscape designer Kathryn Herman. Mike and Becky had the idea of a connecting meadow between the farmhouse and barn as a nod to the land's agrarian roots, which Kathryn has used to link the two properties while maintaining their identities. Behind the barn, at the edge of Mike and Becky's now unified property, there is a one-room schoolhouse that served the children of the local farmers in the late 19th century. It has obviously never been touched. One wonders if its turn might be next.

Haler Architects: halper.com | The Flat: theflatwestport.com