From House To Home

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Homeowners Judy and Ben Flora aren’t afraid of change, but in an era when reality television crews can flip a home in 30 minutes, it’s nice to know that not everyone is looking for immediate gains. Since 1977, when they moved in, they have continuously realigned and redesigned everything from the front door to the back gardens. What was an almost 100-year-old farmhouse on an unsteady foundation has been reinvented time and again into this classic family home.

Initially, Judy says, their primary concern was to civilize the “basic, four down, four up” blueprint and add an extra bathroom to accommodate their family of five. “It was drafty. It was old then. It only had one bathroom when we bought it, and we had three children,” explains Judy.

Next, they set out to demolish a serviceable but not so lovely glass-enclosed front porch with the goal of creating a more inviting facade. What they discovered was a foundation in disrepair. “The house was actually leaning off the foundation and that’s how we worked into a major remodeling,” explains Judy. Because, as she points out, “when you jack up a house, everything falls off the walls.”

And not just the walls. The flooring was laid directly on top of the joists, which meant that across the entire lower level, the original wide-plank heart of pine could not be saved.

Not to be deterred, Ben and Judy rolled up their sleeves and went to work. Forced to replace all the original plaster on the first floor, they decided to go ahead and open up the circulation. Walls came down. Doors became columns, for easier access from one room to the next. Oak hardwoods and new moldings were layered into place to give the communal spaces a much more polished appearance.

Upstairs, the demolition was not so pronounced. The original plaster walls turned out to be the ideal canvas for a faux painting that remains in place today—gently diffusing the sunlight as it filters in through the bedroom windows. Here, the heart of pine flooring is reminiscent of the home’s history.

It wasn’t just the home that was being set right. Judy and Ben share a passion for gardening and the 10-acre parcel reflects this labor of love. Over the years, they steadily worked their way around the backyard. It features a blend of floral gardens, herb gardens, formal arrangements, and wild displays of color. The bricked patio leads to a swimming pool, and beyond that an unused gazebo still stands as a reminder of the days when the kids would duck behind the long-paneled curtains to change their clothes.

As a professional Realtor, Judy is always aware of trends and often finds herself dreaming of something entirely different. So when her children left for college, she and Ben began another major project. They added 1,200 square feet of living space, which accommodates a beautiful three-season porch, remodeled kitchen, breakfast area, and a much larger master suite. The space above the garage became a sewing room where Judy designs and sews everything from the silk-paneled curtains for her formal spaces to the blue turquoise linens for the breakfast room table.

Surprisingly, her color palette tends to remain a little more fixed than her blueprint. She may add crown molding and square footage, but when it comes to colors, she tends to rely on various hues and surprising patterns of her favorites—harvest gold, chocolate brown, and autumn orange. “I’ve just always decorated in those colors,” she says.

Their next project is to restore a barn at the back of the property that was built around the same time as the home itself. She and Ben have already turned an old bunkhouse on the property into a small apartment. Their family compound keeps that connection with the past and creates what Judy calls “the farming feel,” even as suburbia edges closer and closer. This home has been lived in, loved, jacked up, set down, primed and painted, cut and pasted—but never has it been flipped and forgotten.