From House To Home

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The newspaper ad listed a 12-acre farmhouse property and pictured the accompanying barn, but not the actual house that was up for sale and had been empty for 11 years. Intrigued by the price (which by Los Angeles standards seemed inexpensive) and the idea of refurbishing and then renting or maybe using it as a retreat, Kip and Cyja Kelly decided to buy the property in 2000.

Now, after a major restoration effort, the couple and their three children have settled into the historic homestead. Their home in LA is the one they ultimately decided to rent out.

Kip, who maintains his architectural career both in Pennsylvania and on the West Coast, explains, “It was a challenging but such an enlightening experience. You end up falling in love with a house after working on it and trying to understand how it was built.”

“The house was unlivable for four years, and when we finally did move in, every weekend we’d have a visitor from the Kreider family who had kept ownership of the house all the way through the 1980s,” explains Cyja.

The surrounding acres of farmland were originally granted to the family by William Penn in the early 1700s. And like many historic homes, the house went through transformations and additions through generations. The log side of the house dates back to 1766, and the stone portion was added on around 1830.

Kip adds, “The beams are all chestnut, which is a very straight and hard wood, and that’s why so many colonial log homes are still intact. Sometime around the 1930s, the bottom logs started to rot, and the house was jacked up, and they poured concrete around the perimeter.”

Aside from the addition of the stone section, the house hadn’t been remodeled since the 1800s. The floor in the living room was dirt, and the wood floors were never actually stained or sealed. “There were no hallways; they were considered wasteful,” says Cyja. “There wasn’t a wood-burning fireplace because someone had put in Franklin stoves that were later removed. The kitchen had a metal all-in-one sink, and there was an old stove, but no cabinets.” The house was typically compartmentalized and “head knocker” doorways, no closets, crooked floors, and small windows were among the many things that had to be addressed.

For Kip, who considers contemporary design that maintains the warmth of traditional architecture his specialty, this was the perfect project. (Cyja also studied architecture on the West Coast before turning her attention to raising their children.) Their goal was to reconfigure the spaces for modern living while staying true to the colonial aesthetic that lends such intrinsic warmth to the home.

“We expanded the size of some of the existing windows but wanted to be true to the original. Having moved from LA, it would have been hard to live day to day in a house with small windows,” says Kip.

In the family room, they maximized the light and the view by tripling the six-over-six colonial windows, and in the master bath, a skylight allows light to pour in above the spacious walk-in shower.

In addition to the main house, just 10 feet away is another building that was once “the summer kitchen.” A group of Daniel Boone historians date that structure to before the log cabin, and it hasn’t been altered since 1740. Cyja explains that the walls have original paint with “smoosh marks” in a blue pigment that resemble a faux treatment. “We haven’t touched it; we don’t know what to do with it yet. It’s hard to disturb something that’s been there for so long.”