WRITTEN BY VALERIE EASTON PHOTOGRAPHED BY BARRY WONG

	The new living room retains all the charm and patina of the old, in a house Lesley Chapin says she and her husband bought "in about 20 minutes," even though it was in disrepair and had only one bathroom. The coffered ceiling is original to the house; the richly colored fir bead board lining the walls is new. The old river-rock fireplace has been replicated with a new version that works; a raised hearth and wooden mantel were added.

In 1989, Lesley and Ross Chapin bought one of the oldest houses on Mercer Island and moved in with 18-month-old twins, soon followed by a third child. The big, old, white farmhouse's sunroom, screened porch, acre of lawn and huge trees practically shouted nostalgic charm. It was a memory of a house, the kind of place we all wish our grandparents owned so we could look back fondly on our childhood visits. But the reality was a house in disrepair, mucked up by a 1950s remodel with dropped ceilings and sheet rock obscuring the fir walls.

"There wasn't much cosmetic stuff we could do because it was endless," says Lesley of the 1908 house burdened with a shiny white-and-red kitchen, shag carpet and only one bathroom for a family of five.
 

One of the oldest houses on Mercer Island, the Chapins' farmhouse was built in 1908. Tall windows distinguished the original corner sunroom as they do today, but a new deck links house and garden, and a top-floor deck affords a view out to the lake.

Not knowing where to begin inside, the Chapins started working on the garden, so overgrown it towered above their heads. It felt more like archaeology than gardening as they discovered a couple of ancient Adirondack chairs buried in the shrubbery. While the old house posed beautifully on a generous piece of property, there was little connection between it and the garden. The kitchen at the back sat 12 feet above the ground, with only a couple of little windows and no access to Lesley's vegetable garden.

When they started to interview architects, the Chapins knew they wanted to keep the aura of age and the integrity of the home's original design. When Robin Abrahams said she wouldn't change a thing about the large, open, fir-clad landing at the top of the stairs, Lesley knew she'd found an architect who understood the home's charm. Project designer Elizabeth Maher and Abrahams of Abrahams Architects, plus colleague Anne VanDyne, all worked on the design for the remodel, a long process in which the Chapins and their children were intensely involved.

All knew the siding would need to be removed and insulation added, but contractor Peter Davis, of Peter Davis Builders on Mercer Island, ended up taking the house down to the studs, due in part to the discovery of carpenter ants. Even the demolition was time consuming, for the Chapins hoped to re-use as much of the old house as possible.
 

	The kitchen used to be dark and isolated from the rest of the house. Now it's linked to the sunroom by a generously scaled doorway, and has a bank of windows and a glass door opening to the deck and garden. Dark green soapstone counters and a glowing red Aga stove lend color. Huckleberry Hound naps on the Marmoleum checkerboard floor.

The new farmhouse is nearly the same size and footprint as the Chapins' beloved wreck, and the upstairs landing still links the bedrooms radiating off it. But the doorways and hallways are wider, the windows larger and more numerous, and a music room now takes up part of the old front porch. Regrading created the desired link between kitchen and garden. Five bathrooms were added, perhaps as a reaction to sharing a single shower for so long.

Now that the route to the front door is clearly delineated, and river-rock stairs have made the porch important, guests no longer wander to the back of the house. No part of the house looks more original than these stones, but they are new, carefully chosen to match the river rock in the fireplace. Since the handsome old fireplace refused to draw, it had to be totally rebuilt, and now retains the look of the past with the additions of a raised hearth and wooden mantle milled from a cedar tree taken down during construction. Large windows in the entry give the feel of the screened porch it replaces, with the house's original white siding coating the inside walls. But the slate floor is new, as are the light fixtures from Rejuvenation Lighting and House Parts in Portland.
 

A dark little sewing room was transformed into an airy master bedroom with tall casement windows on three sides and doors out to a second-floor deck. Until the new windows went in upstairs, the Chapins didn't realize they had a view of Lake Washington.
The 6-foot-tall casement windows in the sunroom were raised higher than the original windows for safety and to take full advantage of the view out to the garden and surrounding trees.

Part of the old front porch has been made into a music room with French doors opening to the living room. Lesley is an opera singer who occasionally gives concerts at home, so the doors can be thrown open and the living room packed with people; at other times, the doors are closed so the children or Lesley can practice the piano in peace.

Even though the house is 5,500 square feet, it retains its cozy farmhouse feel. Maher credits the original home's perfect proportions for this. And the home's generous space was used well. "Everything is gutsy in scale," explains Abrahams, "we pumped up the volume." The fireplace was rebuilt with hefty stones, the casement windows lining the sunroom have 6-foot panes, and because the Chapins are tall, the kitchen countertops are 38 inches high. "The house manages to be period without being precious," Maher concludes.

Past and present are blended in bead board, stone, glass and light fixtures. The diamond-shaped window panes original to the dining room have been replicated by Lindal window company in the kitchen and music room. While the old bead board on the stairway is darker than the rich, red fir of the newer living-room walls, the whole house has such a patina of age that it's nearly impossible to find what is original and what is the "new part."

In the kitchen, for instance, they aged the fir cabinets with a pumpkin-colored stain, then found period-appropriate tile, light fixtures and hardware. The architects credit Lesley Chapin with much of this attention to detail, for she extensively researched 1908 styles and finishes. Lesley is especially pleased with the push-button light controls that match the ones found in the old house, and the mix of reproduction and antique light fixtures.

"So many projects are about creating something new, but this was about keeping what was so wonderful about the old farmhouse," says Maher, adding admiringly, "The house had so much character, the owners had such vision, and they never faltered."