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"View Slideshow\n\nCertain houses have to wait longer than others to find the right people to bring them back to life.\n\nIn 1935 the Colonial Revival architect Richardson Brognard Okie built one of his classic Pennsylvania farmhouses for a Philadelphia investment counselor named Robert Boltz. The client purchased 340 acres and commissioned Okie to design a working dairy farm, complete with a main residence, five outbuildings and a man-made lake and water raceways that ran an actual waterwheel. Drawing on both American and English vernacular styles, as was his habit, Okie gave his client one of his beautifully detailed design pastiches: The main house was made of stone and featured such trademark Okie gestures as a recessed porch with double arches, a chunky pediment over the front door, dormer windows on the second floor that are inset through the cornice, set-back wings with different rooflines, lanterns on shelf brackets, and custom hardware in a range of designs.\n\nNeither the client nor his architect was playing farm, however. The basement of the main house, which is lined from floor to ceiling in white subway tile, featured built-in tubs piped with cold well water in which milk cans were kept until they were picked up for distribution. There was a bank barn for milking the cows; a large L-shaped building containing work spaces and implement sheds; and a blacksmith&amp;#39;s shop, where all of the property&amp;#39;s hardware was hand-forged following Okie&amp;#39;s drawings. There was a double-sided corncrib, which was converted into a caretaker&amp;#39;s house, a later functioning corncrib, and...well, it comes as no surprise that by the end of the 20th century the expansive estate had been sitting on the market for several years.\n\nPatrick Bell and David Guilmet, owners of an eponymous design firm based in Solebury, Pennsylvania, were undaunted by the condition of the property, which had been divided into several parcels since Boltz&amp;#39;s time (the Bucks County Audubon Society owns a large plot that includes the waterwheel house and still another barn). Guilmet was a longtime admirer of Okie&amp;#39;s work and was able to see beyond the main house&amp;#39;s asphalt roof, the decaying outbuildings, the 1960s kitchen, the dozens of layers of paint and wallpaper\u2014and its inherent quirkiness. &amp;quot;The house really isn&amp;#39;t suitable for today&amp;#39;s American family,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;It has an eccentric layout, with small rooms, a single bathroom on the second floor. There&amp;#39;s no family room. The dining room is separate from the kitchen. And then there are all those outbuildings. Frankly, I think the place scared people off\u2014everyone but us.&amp;quot;\n\nGuilmet says that the relationship he and Bell have with the house is &amp;quot;on a lifetime plan.&amp;quot; In order to bring the place back to Okie&amp;#39;s original vision, they started by studying Okie&amp;#39;s studio archive and then set about tearing out anything that was not original. They removed every lick of paint from the interior and had the windows hand-stripped and reglazed with restoration glass. They updated the plumbing, heating and electrical systems, added authentic hand-split shake roofs, replaced rotted interior and exterior moldings, restored the floors and designed and installed a new kitchen in what Guilmet calls the &amp;quot;Okie spirit.&amp;quot;\n\nThe interior decoration was the easy part, especially since Bell is also an antiques dealer who specializes in Americana and has a particular interest in painted furniture and folk art. &amp;quot;We wanted the rooms to feel accurate, of course,&amp;quot; says Guilmet, &amp;quot;but we also wanted it to be clear that we are living in the 21st century, not the 18th\u2014not even the 1930s, for that matter.&amp;quot; Contemporary insertions include the fully functioning appointments in the kitchen, a modern rug in the living room and a tailored leather bed in the master bedroom.\n\nThe general ambience of the interiors is nevertheless very much in keeping with the architecture. In the cozy living room, with its newly resuscitated wood floors, wainscoting and moldings, Guilmet brought together classic wing chairs, a weathervane, a cigar-store figure and an early New England tavern table. The dining room features a Queen Anne cherry dining table and an overmantel panel Guilmet himself painted, after a Colonial Williamsburg original. Throughout the house, period coverlets, theorems, painted Shaker boxes, buckets and firkins extend that feeling of the lovingly and sometimes quirkily handmade that is so typical of American folk art and handicraft.\n\nAs for the house itself, Guilmet confides that even after a decade, he is still making new discoveries and is continually aware of Okie&amp;#39;s influence over his own design work. &amp;quot;Now that I own and have restored an Okie house, I realize how difficult it is to get his kind of detail-conscious design out of your mind and onto the paper and then off the paper and into the contractor&amp;#39;s brain and then out again through the artisan&amp;#39;s hand. You really can&amp;#39;t ever come to the end of a man who was as obsessive as Okie was. I&amp;#39;m lucky: I don&amp;#39;t have to.&amp;quot;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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