In summer this type of country home has much to offer.  It is light, airy, and spacious; but when fall begins to indicate its arrival, unless the structure has been made nearer weather tight than is the nature of barns, life in the haymow is chill and sour.  For use the year around, the old barn must be completely rebuilt with a cellar beneath for a heating plant and side walls and undersides of roof well covered with insulating material to prevent cold from entering or heat escaping.  One of the most successful methods of treating the front, where once the old barn doors swung wide to admit a fully loaded haywagon, is to substitute a many-paned window of almost cathedral proportions.  This lets in adequate light for what might otherwise be a dark interior.  In summer it can be screened to keep out flies and mosquitoes.  Through it on fair winter days, especially if it faces south or west, pours that most valuable attribute of country living, bright sunlight.

An old water-power sawmill makes an unusually attractive country home.  We know of at least one so adapted.  Here the space once given over to sawing logs into boards has been completely enclosed and is now the living room.  On one side is a noble fireplace flanked by large casement windows that look out on the old mill pond.  Bedrooms and service quarters are located in the end sections where lumber used to be seasoned and other special work done.  This unique bit of remodeling, combined with the pond as a main feature of landscape development, is both rare and enviable.  Yet there are a surprising number of old commercial structures that lend themselves to remodeling into present day homes and by their very unconventionality take on added charm.

In New England there is a substantial stone building of no architectural pretensions except that width, depth, and height are distinctly related to each other.  It is now a country home but it began as a small textile mill in the early days of the 19th century when the industrial revolution was just getting under way.  Later, when the factory era became thoroughly established, this lone little mill was left high and dry by the tide that swept toward the larger centers and it stood untenanted for years.  Finally it was retrieved by some one with vision enough to see that, with proper partitions, both ground and second floors could be divided into satisfactory rooms.  Here the new owner, or his architect, had the discretion to preserve as much as possible of the past.  The old mill owner’s counting room, on the lower floor, is now the library and, in almost untouched condition, is complete even to the cast-iron stove that once warmed it.

Converting buildings originally designed for other uses may take a still different course.  A house, too small in itself for present day use, can form the nucleus of a country home.  A most attractive place in Maine was so assembled.  There were two or three other buildings on the property which were shifted from their original locations by jacks and rollers and skillfully joined to the little house to form wings.  By clever rearrangement of rooms and shifting or removal of partitions, the assembled group became large enough for the new owner’s uses.