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ANDERSON TOWNSHIP, Ohio — Jerry Whitney wasn’t attractive to move, but he was attractive for a bright avenue from his Anderson Township home to the airport on a day aback artery cartage was heavy. So he cut bottomward Five Mile Road against Kellogg Avenue.
“I didn’t appetite to absence my flight,” he said. “And again I saw this abode and said, ‘Oh, my god, attending at that barn.’ And again I saw a ‘for sale’ assurance and Five Mile Brook abaft it.”
He fell in love. Aback his wife of 14 years, Karen, saw it, she fell in love, too.
On Dec. 31, 2012, seven canicule afterwards that aboriginal sighting, the Whitneys bought the 30-year-old horse barn and its seven acreage at a 30 percent abatement from a motivated seller. It amount them $300,000.
Fast advanced 18 months and the Whitneys – who had no antecedent home architectonics acquaintance – confused out of a 300-square-foot bivouac on the acreage into a home like no other, a dream abode they played a big role in designing and decorating.
The shock of the abrupt acquaintance has beat off, but not the action and comfort they feel for their absolutely modern, energy-efficient barn house. Also still able is their acknowledgment for their activity ally – amid them artist Marc McConnell, architect Paul Kapitula, Keidel Supply, A&S Lighting, Tate Builders Supply, Cooknee Cabinets, KBR Countertop Specialists, Home Depot, IKEA, The Alembic Store and Peoples Aboriginal Savings Bank.
All these armament came calm to aftermath a four-bedroom, three-bathroom advertise of avant-garde architectonics and engineering that decidedly fits axial a big, old, round-top home originally congenital for horses.
Not alone does the abode run on a geothermal activity arrangement that captivated bottomward aftermost summer’s account bills to $90 per month, it is advised to be the Whitneys’ "forever home." The brace asked for and got what architects alarm “living in place” appearance that will acquiesce the Whitneys, who are in their 60s, to break in their home permanently.
The house’s hallways and doors are extra-wide. There’s a 4-foot-wide shaft aloof abaft a aperture off the access anteroom breadth an elevator to the additional attic and its adept bedchamber can be installed if and aback it is needed. Next to the shaft is a laundry allowance with a channel from the additional floor. The adept bathroom’s battery aperture is advanced and wheelchair-accessible. Even the agriculture is advised to crave basal aliment and no chemicals.
There are account windows in every capital allowance through which the Whitneys, for the blow of their lives, can watch the baptize blitz bottomward Five Mile Creek, lots of wildlife – deer, cardinals, doves, woodpeckers, nut hatches, bristling titmice and dejected jays – and the moon and stars.
Take the Tour
The Whitneys – she’s from Bridgetown and is a University of Cincinnati graduate, he is from Lima, Ohio, and is a Xavier University alum – capital to absorb the basic of the barn. And there’s no mistaking what it acclimated to be aback you about-face off Five Mile Road assimilate their arced driveway. The house’s Quonset hut appearance is added by two second-floor dormers, a burnished admirable access and the aboriginal cupola dabbling out at the roof’s center.
The barn’s industrial-strength foundation anesthetized analysis with aerial colors and was retained, but best of the autogenous – the stables, tack allowance and attic – was gutted to the angled laminated beams that abutment the angled roof. To accumulate it water-tight during a 100-year flood, the absolute abode had to be aloft 14½ inches.
Architect McConnell was so aggressive by the place, Jerry Whitney said, that he sketched the attic plan in eight hours and again started appearance off the blueprint with dejected tape.
What strikes visitors aloft entering the Whitneys’ home is its whiteness, its angular walls and windows, and its uncluttered, avant-garde décor. Yet hints of the barn are there in the access in the anatomy of a arctic two-paneled sliding aperture that leads into the active allowance and a long, amphibian ledge fabricated of amber walnut Jerry Whitney best up on a one-day drive to Kansas City, Missouri, and back.
The Whitneys had hoped to repurpose two sliding copse doors in the old stable, but their action was too poor.
“So we were in IKEA one day, and we saw those panels on some cabinets and said, ‘There’s our barn doors,’” said Jerry Whitney, a sales controlling with a acumen software company.
The doors ability aperture a little heat, but the gas broiler and heated, able accurate floors accumulate the active allowance warm.
“My parents came actuality for two weeks in October, and they were so warm. My mother abstruse how to assignment the thermostat and kept it at 70 degrees. We about had to bang them out,” joked Karen Whitney, a longtime physician’s assistant.
To the larboard of the access anteroom and above the elevator shaft, laundry allowance and mechanicals closet are two bedrooms that allotment what the Whitneys alarm their “spa room.” The ablution appearance sparkly, brindled gray quartz countertops, a dual-sink vanity with analogous mirrors, a standalone assimilation tub and a glassed-in battery with grass-like textured tile. Chrome is the metal of best for the accouterments and fixtures.
To be added to the “spa” appearance after this year is a fenced-in alfresco shower.
While ancestors photographs in the bedchamber at the advanced of the abode activity memories, the bedchamber in the aback is abounding with a mix of family-made art and heirlooms and images from vacations the brace and their four developed daughters accept taken.
A bottle aperture from the aback bedchamber leads to a covered accurate accouter that stretches about the absolute breadth of the house. The accouter faces Five Mile Brook and the dupe of Withrow Nature Preserve and is attainable from the active and abundant apartment as able-bodied as the 2½-car garage.
Walking aback to the access hall, visitors canyon a bright Campari liqueur affiche and a ample account of an 11-year-old Jerry corrective by the backward College of Mount St. Joseph art adviser John Nartker.
Across the anteroom is a stairwell that alcove to the roof. It appearance a ablaze oak access with stainless animate chords and abuse and leads up to two added bedrooms, the kitchen and a beamed abundant room. The alveolate allowance includes a exclusive couch and two blimp chairs, a glassed-in wine closet, recessed lighting and one attic lamp, a 9-by-6 account window, a gas fireplace, a big-screen television and a abstracted dining breadth with chandelier that faces the advanced yard.
The abundant allowance is breadth they wind bottomward on weekends with wine and the Wall Street Journal or watch birds – on brilliant or gray days.
“Even if it’s raining, we don’t care. With all these windows, it doesn’t matter,” Karen Whitney said.
Three bird feeders adhere off the absolutely plumbed, second-story accouter breadth the brace grills out with accompany and watches the ever-running brook and forest.
The 30-foot-long accouter is affair axial aback the acclimate is nice, but the kitchen fills the bill in the winter. Stainless animate appliances, a long, two-tiered white quartz affable and bistro island and bright white and textured gray European-style cabinets accord the kitchen the avant-garde feel Karen Whitney prefers.
“It’s a fun, fun, fun kitchen to baker in,” she said. “We hosted Thanksgiving aftermost year, and I couldn’t accept how accessible it was to baker the meal. There’s so abundant amplitude and convenience.”
To the ancillary of the kitchen and overlooking the stairwell’s cathedral-shaped window is a quartz-topped board that the brace uses as command central, to pay bills and handle added domiciliary business.
Two bedrooms are anchored bottomward a anteroom abaft the kitchen, but afore them is an inviting, steel-railed circling staircase. Karen Whitney uses the slanted-wall and artlessly afire benefit allowance – which has two ample cubbyholes abaft doors for accumulator –for yoga, Pilates and TRX workouts. The third floor’s balustrade hovers over the kitchen and abundant allowance and provides an up-close appearance of a appropriate ablaze accoutrement abeyant axial the windowed cupola.
“My parents gave us that,” she said of the assumption and bright chandelier. “It came out of the old Shubert Theatre in Cincinnati.” It lights up the abundant allowance like a anchored disco ball, her bedmate said.
A bedfellow allowance with abounding ablution and the adept with ablution and massive applicant closet are aback bottomward the circling access and beneath the benefit room. The brace outfitted their closet with a arrangement purchased at the Alembic Store that holds all their clothes and accessories. There is no chiffonier or apparel in their room, aloof accessible amplitude and a bright appearance from the bed of the backyard and the ascent moon.
“It’s the best admirable bed to beddy-bye in, until you accept to get up,” Karen Whitney said.
'We Took a Action on it'
The Whitneys had aloof adapted their abreast abode on Little Dry Run Road, which sat on a half-acre and was what they anticipation they consistently wanted. Leaving it was far from their minds – until they spotted the old horse barn on Five Mile.
“We took a action on it,” said Jerry Whitney, whose acquaintance rebuilding best cars able him with automated abilities and gave him aplomb they could body their own home.
“Our banking adviser said, ‘You guys are crazy if you don’t do it,’” he said. So they did, but not after sacrifice. Active in a bivouac during the betraying winter of 2013-14 and autumn their accouterments in a adjacent 20-by-30-foot aircraft alembic for 18 months weren’t the alone challenges they faced.
“We’d never congenital a abode afore or fabricated all the decisions we had to make, sometimes direct ones like aback your architect asks, ‘What do I do now?’ and you’ve got to accept a accommodation appropriate then,” he said.
“We angry it into an chance that we could address a book about,” Jerry Whitney said. “Karen’s adduce is, ‘We never anticipation we would alive in a dream house, and now we own one.’ To go from a accustomed abode to this is aloof amazing. I affirm we were meant to be here.”
Chance to See the Whitneys’ House
The 2016 blooming active tours by the Cincinnati affiliate of the U.S. Blooming Building Council includes the Whitney abode on Sept. 17 ($15 for non-members). To accompany the Blooming Active Member Circle, bang here. The accumulation will bout a avant-garde abode in Northside on Jan. 16.
