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| Sustainable and Stylish Barn Home |
| Cassandra Naylor didn't give up style in the eco-friendly home she made from a 100-year-old barn on her family farm. |
| By Susan Stiles Dowell |
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| photography: Paul Whicheloe |
Cassandra, here with dog Norie, renovated her family's barn to live as close to nature as possible.
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Cassandra Naylor is deeply attached to Skyfield, a farm in Baltimore County, Maryland. Six generations of her family have called it home. Her grandfather's Maryland Hunt Cup steeplechase winners were quartered in what was known as the bank barn, and she learned to ride there. Many times, she led her mount up the long ramp to the second-floor tack room. "There were raccoons scampering in the attic and tools everywhere," she recalls. "It was a time capsule of country life."
photography: Paul Whicheloe
Before its green renovation, Cassandra's barn once housed horses, dairy equipment, and a farmer's apartment. |
In the early 1990s, as development was breaking up an adjacent farm, she and her family were already taking measures to preserve theirs through the Maryland Environmental Trust. With the barn, there was no question about keeping its character and footprint, and talk turned to converting interiors for more personal use. "I'd been wanting to downsize in order to live simpler and more steeped in nature," says Cassandra, who, in her fifties and newly widowed, was in favor of letting her son and his growing family live in the big house on the property. Moving to the barn was not only a project she couldn't resist but also a responsibility. "I know this piece of earth," she says. "I wanted to be in the barn in the most respectful way possible."
photography: Paul Whicheloe
For a spacious kitchen, cattle and horse stalls were removed to accommodate a step-back cupboard and a cabinet with sinks, both coated in milk-based paint.ÊThe grain chute is now a spice cabinet. |
The renovation she envisioned was "a simple shelter, self-sufficient and eco-green," but at the time not simple to achieve. She couldn't draw on today's broader green design alternatives and more and better sources for renewable materials. "There was less enthusiasm for the concept in the mid-1990s." Instead, she read everything she could get her hands on—Mother Jones, Mother Earth News, Thoreau—about achieving self-sufficiency. She wrote the American Institute of Architects to find "green" architects in her area and got encouragement from a pioneer in the field, William McDonough, then dean of the University of Virginia School of Architecture. Although he and later his firm were helpful, she eventually hit a snag and "needed an architect close to home for a convenient working relationship, someone who wouldn't change the structure but serve my strict environmental needs."
photography: Paul Whicheloe
Sliding glass-paneled doors are original to the tack room, now CassandraÕs bedroom.
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