a farmhouse RESCUE

Using a cache of salvaged finds, the homeowner, architect, and contractor together rescued a tumbledown farmhouse in Vermont.

- MARY ELLEN POLSON

DESPITE ITS CHARM—the ca. 1830 house is composed of two separate structures pulled together sometime in the distant past—“it was in bad shape,” says Jane Benson Ackerman. “Every time it rained, a waterfall came in through the basement.” She felt ready to move on from her long-time home in Vermont.

The kitchen was dark and pokey, with yellowed linoleum countertops and beat-up plywood cabinets. It was inhabited by unwanted residents, and she does not mean ghosts. “I once opened an upper cabinet and a family of mice, several generations of them, looked down at me. I never closed a door so fast.”