Kitchen

After: The soaring new living and dining space benefits from an abundance of natural light from every side, and they spent a lot of time trying to find the best lighting for the kitchen. The final choice: long, narrow copper pendants from Denmark suspended by ultra thin wires to not disrupt the visual flow of the room.

The bookcase in the great room holds about 3,500 books. Several hundred more can be found in the living room, and on the floor-to-ceiling shelves in Zeke and Teasel's offices.

The home’s modest size meant Caleb did not have to worry too much about material and labor costs. For example, all the interior walls are done in plaster, which is three-to-four times more expensive than drywall in Maine.

Ernesto designed the villa’s kitchen more “for every day,” he says, but the one added to the courtyard has a professional range and parrilla to accommodate groups. “I don’t need super-fancy equipment,” Ernesto says. He and Yektajo designed the bar stools.

He made the shelving, cabinets, and shroud in the kitchen from a felled maple tree.

"It’s not uncommon for sellers to throw some new black plastic under the house to conceal any potential water problems,” says Burkholder. “Old leaky pipes are one problem, but a high water level that leaves the crawlspace musty can be an expensive fix as well.”

The cabinets and floating shelf are raw steel, and the handmade table is lime plaster, joined with Zara Home stools.

After: Geoffrey custom-built the wall cabinetry and shelving, which is painted Valspar’s Lake Country. “We wanted to create an entryway,” he explains. In an effort to repurpose, all the wood in the kitchen is taken from old ceiling joists and old hemlock siding. “Our contractors learned that we were restoring things, so people just dropped materials off for us,” he says. In regards to teal color selection, “the light came first,” he said, referencing the slightly darker shade of the overhead fixture. “When we were picking out the color for the cabinetry, we wanted to make sure it worked – again all the colors tie back to the wallpaper in the living room.”

After: A new porch roof, made of metal, completes the updated exterior facade. The home’s doors and the garage door are painted a punchy pink, Benjamin Moore’s Rosewood.

After: The kitchen’s countertops and backsplash are “all those 1950s-30s enamel card tables,” Geoffrey explains. “That was a decision I made early on; it took me a year and a half to collect them all.” The beams were a great surprise; they were hidden away in the ceiling. The appliances are former Consumer Reports test appliances bought at auction, and the ceiling lights are a custom design, intended to look mid-century.

The dining table was custom built from walnut by furniture maker John Lightfoot Greiner.

A dark green Lacanche range is backed by 18th-century English reproduction tiles hand-painted in Portugal.