When two architects stumbled upon a stately hay barn in Rockville, Va., with a for-sale sign on it, they knew they wanted it to be their next project. But instead of building and designing for a client, the team, Mike and Nea Poole of local firm Poole & Poole Architecture, wanted to finally design for themselves and make the structure their forever home.
“We were on our way to a 17-acre lot to look for a place to build our house,” says Nea. “Then, we rode up to this corner and literally on axis with the road was the barn.” After close examination, Nea recalls exclaiming to Mike, “That’s the project!”
The Barn at Walnut Hill was originally built in 1978 and, while it’s not technically famous, the property holds some historical value in Hanover County. According to the architects, the hay barn was built on the 30-acre cattle farm of the late Harwood and Louise Cochrane. Harwood had a delivery truck business, which he grew into Overnite Transportation and sold to the freight division of UPS for over $1 billion in the 1980s. Louise, an artist, designed the barn herself and is said to have chosen the Dutch Gambrel style—a symmetrical roof with two slopes on each side—for its classic Americana feel.
After purchasing the property, the Pooles chose to respect the original barn features, such as the existing footprint, window structure, and interior wood posts and beams. Any additions or changes were intended to blend harmoniously with the original design and adjacent farmland while also fulfilling their goal of creating a warm and inviting home where they could age in place.
On the exterior, the design team focused on highlighting the barn’s symmetrical rhythm and scale. It used existing vent locations and barn door openings for the first-floor windows and carried the pattern above to the windows and dormers on the second floor. Small windows were also added to the two vent shafts on the roof to serve as a welcoming beacon to guests.
A covered entry was a necessity for the owners, but they knew constructing a front porch or portico would interrupt the design. As a result, the home’s front door was recessed 4 feet back from the original exterior to create a covered space that also emphasizes the existing pair of open barn doors.
On the rear side of the structure, the land falls away and reveals the home’s lowest level that was once used to house farm equipment. The owners ended up splitting the space in half, using one side as a large garage and the other as a recreational basement that seamlessly connects to the outdoor living area via floor-to-ceiling, sliding glass doors that mimic the look of the adjacent garage doors.
The largest exterior addition was the pool and surrounding fenced-in patio area. Not wanting to install a standard rectangular pool, the team selected a unique, modular shape that offers different seating options and areas for people to gather.
Ascending to the main floor from a new staircase added from the basement, the home’s double-height living area features the barn’s original parallel and intersecting wood posts, beams, and steel joists.
“We didn’t change any of the structure,” says Nea. “If there was a post or a beam somewhere, it stayed.”
A modern kitchen, living room, and dining area fill the updated, open floor plan, with a mix of both reused and new finishes present throughout the space.
In true adaptive-reuse fashion, the designers were extremely attentive in repurposing materials taken off the original structure. The cedar siding was too brittle to keep as exterior siding, but it now serves as an accent material on the kitchen island base, the dual wine cellars in the dining room, the powder room wall, and a few interior sliding doors. Also, the 12x3 floor joists that were cut out for the basement stairs were reused as the treads for those stairs.
New elements, such as the floating stair with cable railing, the two-story stone fireplace, and the random-width, character-grade oak flooring, add to the home’s farm feel while providing an injection of modern elegance. The stair’s railing with sleek, steel posts complements the existing steel features and offers a sense of openness through the central volume.
“With a barn, I think you can go ‘country kitchen’ or ‘industrial modern,’” continues Nea in speaking about style. “We added the two-story stone wall, character oak, and wood to ensure there was a balance to some of the industrial pieces.”
Upstairs on the newly framed second floor, four of the home’s six bedrooms are split between the double-height living room. Developing a floor plan for those bedrooms and how they would connect over the central living was one of the main challenges, states Nea.
“We knew we wanted the main center space open, so you had that feel of what the barn had been with the beams flying across,” she says. “The difficulty was figuring out how to get around the angles of the roof and work those spaces out.”
With a strong desire to keep the original exterior openings, the team also ran into a couple of design challenges with the interior room planning. For example, in the master bath, a 4-foot-by-6-foot window looked directly into the master shower. To add the much-needed privacy, an opaque glass panel on barn door hardware can slide to close off the space when the shower is in use.
Operable sliding barn doors were incorporated on either side of the upper portion of the main space, where the designers cut two openings in order to bring light into those hallways and bedrooms. The owners’ children use the design addition for noise reduction as well.
For the building envelope, rock wool insulation was used throughout for its sustainable, acoustical, and fire-resistant properties. The architects also chose other sustainable elements, including solar panels along the western-facing roof and motorized blinds that control solar gain in the summer and solar warming in the winter.
Plus, nearly all the systems are automated for energy efficiency. The heating, air, fans, and lights are all organized on a smart home hub and are programmed to come on when needed and turn off when appropriate.
“Overall, the barn was great for a house,” says Nea. “The framing was so good that we didn’t have to do anything, even though we were adding that second floor. It was a perfect example of why waste a building like that?”
