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"View Slideshow\n\nOnce upon a time there was a young couple who loved to sail along the New England coast. On one of their sailing trips they discovered the picturesque village of Edgartown on Martha's Vineyard, and they thought it so charming that when their son was born, they decided to hold his christening there, in an old church near the water. The next day, sightseeing along the island's upland lanes, they spotted a piece of property for sale: a heavily wooded plot, threaded with stone walls, with a view of the sea. The young couple looked at one another, and they had one thought: Buy it. So they did\u2014even though, as the wife, Deborah Colitti Wiggins, remembers, \"We had to put the last payment on our credit card.\"\n\nOf course, there was no house on this lovely piece of land. But Colitti Wiggins and her husband, Craig Wiggins, had heard about an architect in New Hampshire named David Howard, who specialized in finding, salvaging and moving historic barns\u2014and once again they looked at each other and said, \"Why not?\" Two years and a fistful of permits later, they owned a 19th-century barn, which Howard disassembled and shipped\u2014literally, since it had to travel by boat\u2014to Martha's Vineyard, where he and a crew of island craftsmen converted it into a summer house. \"They found old beams and old barn siding to finish the interior,\" says Colitti Wiggins, \"and they built a fireplace out of recycled bricks\u2014the beam for the mantel was so big it had to be brought into the site with a crane.\"\n\nAnd that, for nearly 20 years, was the end of the story. The couple lived in California at the time, and over the next decades they moved, first to a London town house, then to a Park Avenue apartment, then to a 1911 house in the West-chester suburbs; they had demanding jobs in advertising and two small children (a daughter had followed the son four years later). The barn on Martha's Vineyard, while a cherished base for summer activities no matter where they lived, was just that\u2014a summer place, furnished with hand-me-downs from other residences.\n\nBut, says Greg Jordan, the New York-based interior designer who worked with the couple on their first New York apartment, their Westchester house and their vintage 60-foot motor yacht: \"It was always their dream to do more with it. They used to tell me, When the kids get old enough, we're going to move to the Vineyard.' We were always working toward that Vineyard house.\" It wasn't until their children were getting ready for college that Craig Wiggins retired and the couple were at last ready to make Martha's Vineyard their home.\n\nBy this time the working relationship between Jordan and Colitti Wiggins had developed into something beyond that of client and designer. \"She has a wonderful eye and great taste and meticulous follow-through,\" says Jordan, and the two have collaborated professionally on a number of projects, including another Martha's Vineyard property (see Architectural Digest, June 2004), with Jordan as designer and Colitti Wiggins as project manager. And Colitti Wiggins has begun to carve out a new career for herself, something she calls \"helping select clients make their lifestyle dreams become a reality\"\u2014 searching out, acquiring and designing properties for clients who know what they want but aren't sure how to get it.\n\nThis clearly wasn't Colitti Wiggins's problem. By the time she and Jordan got around to working on the project they had both been talking about for so many years, they knew exactly what they wanted. They tore out walls inside the barn to make a great room, which Jordan furnished with country antiques, old wicker and pieces upholstered in a chintz that seems to bring the property's abundant flowers indoors. The walls are hung with cherished paintings, among them watercolors by Colitti Wiggins's mother, Carole Russell Colitti; there are nooks for reading and conversation, a handmade refectory table from New Hampshire for convivial dinners and, at one end of the room, an open kitchen on which Jordan and Colitti Wiggins lavished particular thought. Since the couple like to cook, and entertain frequently, they wanted an area where the chef was accessible to family and guests. In the interests of space, food items and crockery were banished to a concealed pantry, but the preparation area was left out in the open, with the stove nestled in a hearth\u2014built of recycled bricks\u2014that has baker's ovens on both sides to store pots and pans in.\n\nTo take advantage of the views over lush lawns and kitchen gardens toward the sea, an octagonal screen porch was added at one corner of the barn\u2014a kind of outdoor sitting room with comfortable wicker seating, a hooked rug and antique quilts. A fireplace\u2014for which, Jordan says, Colitti Wiggins approved every stone\u2014warms one corner and makes this outdoor room \"great most of the year.\"\n\nIn order to accommodate bedrooms, a family room and a library/office for the couple, a new wing\u2014a mirror image of the original barn\u2014was grafted onto the house, but the use of weathered and recycled materials makes it appear as if it had always been there. In the family room and master bedroom, chintzes are layered with small-scale geometric prints for a relaxed and supremely comfortable look; and both rooms open to the outdoors\u2014the family room with a bay window seat, the master bedroom with French doors that lead to the terrace around the pool. \"It's planted aromatically,\" says Jordan, closing his eyes as if he can recall the scent. Upstairs is a feature he's especially proud of: a long room under the eaves lined on either side with cozy alcove beds, each with a curtain to ensure privacy. \"Where are the cousins going to sleep?\" Colitti Wiggins had asked, imagining large family gatherings at holiday time\u2014and this was the answer.\n\nIn fact, the idea of family is central to the owners' vision of their Vineyard barn. \"I wanted it to be the ultimate nest for my family,\" says Colitti Wiggins. \"We had lived in so many different places\u2014but this, I hoped, would be the place they would always come home to.\" After 23 years the house that began at a son's christening has become the home its owners always dreamed of. It doesn't seem too much to say it looks like the place where they will all live happily ever after."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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