Name: Stephen Ellwood and Todd Carr
Location: Cornwallville, New York
Size: 1,600 square feet
Years lived in: 1½
To Stephen and Todd this 1900 fieldstone farmhouse is not a labor of love — it’s just pure love. Sure they have doors that lead to nowhere, but they also have a wood burning stove, an outdoor tub and a barn for a pottery studio. Not to mention an incredibly cute Brussels Griffon named Vernon.
STEPHEN: Todd and I found the house about 2 years ago (after looking for about 5 years) and have been living there part-time for a year and a half. Luckily, the previous resident of 36 years removed any of the bad updates from the life of the house — dropped ceiling in the library, asphalt shingles on the exterior walls. All we needed to do is white wash the entire inside, remove wallpaper, re-skim the plaster walls, and strip off the layers on top of the pine and oak floorboards. We spend the summers expanding the perennial gardens around the property, and Todd sets up his ceramic studio/shop in the barn. Plans for this spring: building the long awaited vegetable garden and setting up the beehives.
For more information about the Cornwallville area check out Stephen's blog The Cornwallville Observatory.
And if you're interested in some of the pottery thrown in the barn visit Todd's blog, Cornwallville Pottery.
Apartment Therapy Survey:
Our style: Rustic and warm minimalism. Botanical. Natural / authentic (there are things in the house that we do not need to improve upon: the stone, the simplicity of the plaster work, the dark oak floors).
Inspiration: Abandoned buildings, gentleman farmers, moss laden woodlands, the Catskills, 19th century photography, our apartment in Greenpoint (a cottage in the city), Casa Vogue, meadows, the industrial revolution, the Outer Hebrides, Edmund De Waal, Howard's End (the book and the film), Noel Kingsbury (British gardener), John Burroughs (19th C. naturalist), the Shakers.
Favorite Element: The natural light that streams into the south facing rooms, the stone, the deep-set window sills, the homemade folk art stair railing, the copper-lined bathtub, the previous owner’s wonderful stories about the house and property, our antique apple tree, the screened-in veranda, the wood burning stove during winter, our hideaway dormer bedroom with its own little staircase.
Biggest Challenge: Learning how to maintain a hundred year old stone farmhouse. Keeping the house warm in winter. Negotiating the lack of storage throughout.
What Friends Say: Magical, amazing, comforting…dreamlike…no one wants to leave!
Biggest Embarrassment: The storage mess that is inside the attached turkey coop (soon to be finished off this spring).
Proudest DIY: Removing the layers of linoleum, carpet, tar paper, and sub flooring to get to the original pine plank floors. The endless project of creating and tending to the perennial gardens.
Dream source: Wyeth (NYC); Les Touilleurs (Kitchen goods, Montreal); Rural Residence (Hudson, NY); Brimfield Market.
Resources
I.U. Tripp & Co. (Oak Hill, New York); Schoharie, New York Antique Show; Bouckville, New York Antique Market; Brimfield Market (Brimfield, Massachusetts); Henry (Hudson, New York)
Thanks, Stephen and Todd!
Images: Stephen Ellwood
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Swoon. Beautiful job guys! Wonderful photos and cute little pup - congrats on a lovely home.
absolutely adorable! I love this house! Thank you for sharing!
This place is just amazing and magical! You both did a beautiful job! Best of luck with your future plans.
Utterly charming!
I love this house! So simple and elegant.
That is most definitely a fantastic farmhouse.
what a peaceful retreat!
Gorgeous. Love it.
This place is so simple and so beautiful. Everything a vacation home should be! I wish there were more pictures of the property.
I love that "Cornwallville Observatory" sign and the picture with the fire place. But I'm not jumping out of my seat at this one.
Love the simplicity. Cute dog. Looks like a wonderful place to honker down during the current storm. Stove in front of a window would worry me, but a small price to pay for such rustic beauty. Great job.
Wonderful!
Oh, I LOVE your house! It's beautiful and liveable and very obviously full of love. Thank you for sharing it!
The place is absolutely amazing, the pictures made my heart ache; I can imagine living in such place for all the eternity, ultimate home.Thank you for sharing.
life's so not fair...
VERY BEAUTIFUL THOUGH! ;)
Love everything about this place, right down to the floor boards. So beautiful. If you ever need a live-in dog snuggler, you guys let me know!
i rarely comment, but this little piece of heaven deserves a bow. so unpretentious and yet obviously intentional. well done, well done.
can we be friends? jk.
sort of.
I loooove it. This is the dream, isn't it? Living in a farmhouse, throwing pottery in the barn. Just lovely. Thank you for sharing.
I love how you embraced simplicity and let all the rough edges shine! Also, the art that you've chosen and the way that you've displayed it is perfection! Thank you so much for sharing, this is one of my favorite tours ever!
OMG. This is one of my all time favorite tours. Simply. Dreamy.
This is quite possibly my dream home. If you ever need a house sitter, please call on me....
Sighs with pleasure and a wee bit of envy.
Just beautiful.
And such precise and informative descriptions of the style and inspirations! I enjoyed reading all of the questionnaire answers, which I frankly usually skim.
the white colours are absolutely tasteful and wonderfully chosen
perfection! Vernon is a lucky pup and so adorable. fantastic job throughout.
Very nice place, I love it--especially that kitchen, it looks so warm and inviting. I want to know the story behind the spectre decal on the dining room ceiling, what's up with that guys? lol. Is the place haunted? *shivers*
Either way, what an amazing place to live!
oooohhhhh, serious house envy.
So intimate and calm. The tall screen in the corner beside the fireplace (slide 11) is a masterstroke.
I'm inspired to do more planting in our stone walls and steps as well (we're also upstate NY).
What a beautiful house, guys!! I said oooooh to just about every photo (aside from the one of Vernon, which elicited more of an AWWWW). Just gorgeous.
Quite possibly my most favorite house tour ever...right up my alley!
I love that huge photo on the wall...any more details you can offer?
This is so obviously a well-loved and well-used home. Thank you for sharing!
www.thecabinhouse.blogspot.com
This gave me chills. So exquisite. We're pretty sure there's a ghost at our place, so I too want to know about the dining-room "spectre."
My mouth popped open as I looked at these photos! So beautiful! Thanks for sharing! It looks so calm and peaceful and so welcoming. :) Good job guys!
I love your home... it looks like the perfect retreat
What an amazing success this home is! As a guest here the photos only satisfy visually. What is not captured is the smell of prepared suppers and foliage, the sounds of laughs and Afro beat playing on an old record player, the delicious food spreads and bloody marys, and of course the fireworks, skiing, and skinny dipping!
I love all the beautiful comments written, people are wonderful.
Ahh! I rarely comment, but felt that I had to with this post. Your house is my ultimate dream home! This is hands down the best tour I've seen on Apartment Therapy dot com. Thank you for sharing with us. :)
Here it is snowing outside, over one foot of snow....and looking at this wonderful farmhouse makes me wish I was there with a fire glowing in the fireplace. I love the simplicity of an authentic country house. This is perfect...beautifully done. The tub in the bathroom is great...is it original to the house?
Beautiful job, I love the simplicity of the colour scheme - it seems airy yet cozy. The dining room table and chairs are probably some of my favourite pieces. This home is definitely the closest I've seen on here to my dream home. Thanks for sharing!
I'm pretty sure this is what heaven looks like. (At least mine) Wow great job.
pleeeeaaase adopt meeeeeeeeee.......................
Gorgeous.
absolutely a-maz-ing.
I'm in such total house lust, my heart is pounding.
So beautiful & warm. Love everything about this. It made me feel peaceful just looking at the pictures.
It does in fact look like heaven. My heaven, anyway.
Vernon epitomizes the gentleman farmer.
simple perfection! love the NHL cooler ... is there a story on that? (sorry, hockey fan, had to ask!)
I LOVE your home. I can just imagine it at night all lit up with white candles in glass jars and me drinking hot cocoa with rum in it and then taking a nap on your couch.
So jealous!
Magical!
Oh my goodness. This just made me sigh with pure happiness.
What a lovely house and surroundings...very peaceful atmosphere !!
Dreamy!
the outside of the home is beautiful; the inside, full of manufactured artifice....the designer inspired piles of books which will never be read, the tins of spices so nonchalantly stacked - there's a difference between organically produced living environments and a show house
so Cozy!
There are parts of this tour which are absolutely perfect. Love this house!
So serene!
I love love love looooove the wood table in the kitchen!!!
I want this!
Love the house. The deep window sills, narrow curving stair, and screen porch are particularly wonderful (and that tub in the yard!). Your choices make it abundantly clear that you love the house as well. Thank you for sharing!
Stephen and Todd: I've been obsessed with AT house tours for almost four years. Yours is hands down, absolutely, without a doubt my most favorite ever. Everything. I love everything about it. Thank you so so much.
This is perfectly and completely my style. I couldn't love it more!
Holy moly. The beauty is almost too much. It's so damn lovely. It's like some English country cottage. Jeez. It's beautiful. I'm at a loss.
I'm in love. You two have amazing taste! All the rooms are so nicely furnished. Each room looks like an Andrew Wyeth painting; so natural and untouched. No doubt you've put so much effort into your home, it looks so warm and welcoming. I love the accents of pewter and silver throughout. I definitely see the shaker influence without being overly austere. The gardens...well don't tell me- you've hidden the polka dotted pony?
Your home is lovely and your garden a wonderland. Simply beautiful.
We wanted to send a quick note to say thank you to everyone for the kind words! We really had no idea what to expect and are so pleased to see that some of you have enjoyed looking through this little window into our world. And a special thanks to our great neighbor Aubyn for suggesting that we participate in the tour, and of course a big thanks to Geoff for bringing our home to the tour... We'll write back soon with some answers to the questions in the comments!
Peehaps it me, but this home tour is not exciting...at all. Now the house tour above this one is amazing. Not feeling it...at all.
I am IN LOVE with this house!!!!!
What a lovely place. It looks like you'd step back in time, be forced to take it slow and easy, and just rest at your home.
Beautiful...perfectly executed, and obviously full of love and respect for the history of the house and the area. I am normally a color person but here using white for walls, bedding, upholstery, etc. works so well with all the dark wood of the antiques. This is just a lovely place--you should be very proud!
so, so beautiful. thank you for sharing.
Utterly enchanting.
Stunning beautiful.
Wow.
congratulations, guys!
great photo spread--love the shot of Vernon--total scene-stealer
ak
Such a breath of fresh air! Absolutely breath taking. I want to put on a pot of tea, find my old Cowboy Junkies CD, and bust out the Barbour coat. Simply stunning! A genuine inspiration.
http://pearltwo.blogspot.com/
PERFECT example of simplicity without minimalist chill. Almost everything is both beautiful, thoughtful and usefull. The perfect house. The outside, with its matching grey paint that so perfectly blends with the stone is exquisite. Everything about this house assures long-lived harmony and delight.
Thanks for sharing. We needed it.
This house is so sweet and dear, a true home sweet home. I have fallen in love with this house. Indoors and out (and that perfect porch in between) it looks like a place where you could gain inspiration by just being in it, where you would just have to sit at the desk, or the porch or the lawn, take a pen to paper and write or draw and everything you create will magically be a masterpiece. Ah, what a house.
"Library secret stair" paint color? Many thanks.
what i love about this house is it's simplicity. so many times a beautiful house like this would be completely gutted and maybe done with beautiful craftsmanship and excellent materials, but would lose so much character. i live in an old house and i've really come to love my sloping floors and creaking staircase that i've tried not to fix. lots of neat little things exist in these old houses that should be celebrated instead of covered up. this couple did such a beautiful job that i'm awestruck. these fellas are living my dream life!! hopefully one day i'll have a cooky old house in the country too. when i do, i hope it looks just like this one!
Finally! Not an Eames chair or "keep calm" print in sight - love it love it love it
I'm not sure I could stand the upkeep of all white walls myself, but it's just fantastic. So sleek and classic and simple.
I too am curious about the "A Spectre" - love the subtlety. I was hooked when I saw the outside... and the inside continued to hold my attention (and awe). Worth your 5 year wait!
Breathtaking! The most inspiring home I've seen on AT. What a pleasure to see an old house decorated with such sensitivity.
I adore the outdoor tub! The first thing installed at our family "farm" was an outdoor shower next to the cabin! What a relaxing way to wash up in the morning!
Beautiful. Thank you for sharing here.
-maria
My 2 favorite things- the cabinet unit to the left of the stove, and the bathroom with its blue clawfoot tub! I live in a farm house that is 1901 in CT and this is my biggest inspiration to date! Thank you for sharing.
Rustic country & minimal. Perfect, except for the sofa!
i just stumbled on this post. i am so IN LOVE with their style!!! i wish someday i can own a home like this and bathe in an outdoor tub!
this home is so beautiful and peaceful, and full of love.
wow. wow. swoon.
it actually gave me a stomachache. like, with lust.
My favorite house tour of all time! Tasteful, beautiful, perfect. Everything is perfect. Love.
So gorgeous, I am normally drawn to AT tours with more color, but this swept me off my feet!
Also, I am so not a dog person - but I have to say that your dog is freakin' adorable.
WELL DONE
This is the home I've been dreaming of - I want to go to here. Where did you get the candle chandelier ?