Architect Elizabeth Roberts restores a colonial-era farmhouse in rural Connecticut

Soon, she was trudging through the mud on a rainy November day to inspect the place. The couple work in New York real estate and were based in Brooklyn at the time, but were living out of the city during the pandemic and chanced upon a beautiful property in Litchfield County, a pastoral area of rolling hills and rural towns two hours north of the city. It has long been an anti-Hamptons - a lower-key escape for actors and notables such as Meryl Streep, the former Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter and the late novelist Philip Roth, who lived on a 150-acre estate just up the road. The farm property Elizabeth was visiting had been in the same family for nearly a century: seven acres, part wooded, part large meadow, with the old white farmhouse and red barn sitting on a little hill. There is a working farm with grazing cows across the road.

The couple had bought it as a weekend home to be close to their children who were at boarding schools nearby. But, like many of those who fled cities during that time, they discovered that they liked the country life. 'Between ice skating and sledding in winter and long walks through the fields in summer, it was such a spectacular place to be,' says the owner.

Less spectacular were the draughty old windows and general decay of the original building. The owners wanted a comfortable gathering place for their four children and extended family, while retaining as much historic structure as possible. As Brooklynites, they had followed Elizabeth's career, admiring the way her interiors were beautifully done but never over the top, and hoped they could entice her to take on their Connecticut project. For Elizabeth, it was a chance to use the skills she had practised and honed in old houses in New York on a different kind of architecture.

Though the farmhouse construction bore little resemblance to a brownstone, there are similarities in her approach. 'What can be saved? Do we replace or restore a window? How do we make the house energy efficient?' she explains. Built in 1779, the three-storey, 460-square-metre house had been enlarged and restored around 1900 by a noted local architect, Richard Henry Dana.

The house may have an architectural pedigree but, as Elizabeth recalls, 'The first time I saw it, I was confused. It's an old farmhouse that's been added to many times. It was unclear how you could get to certain floors'. There were three flights of stairs plus a little secret passage staircase as well, each leading to different wings of the house and they did not connect. 'It was complicated piecing together these disparate parts into a modern house,' she adds.

Indeed, what was planned as a light-touch restoration turned into an extensive project, with Elizabeth and her team exposing the post-and-beam oak structure and rebuilding areas from scratch. From the exterior, nothing much looks changed - Elizabeth's hallmark - but no detail was too small to restore, including the wooden carving of a pineapple above the original front door facing the road. Inside, characterful original features, such as the wide floorboards, panelling and door hardware, were restored, as were the plaster walls where possible. But first, the house received new wiring and plumbing, energy-efficient systems - and a reimagined floorplan.

To unwind the labyrinth, Elizabeth moved the main entrance from the front to the west façade, splitting the rambling farmhouse into two wings. Family spaces are in the original, front part of the house and a two-storey guest wing at the back, which was built in 1900, contains a ground-level suite for the owner's in-laws to stay in, with a new sitting room. The family wanted a space for cooking and eating, where they could also socialise and play games - something that the existing 18th-century proportions could not accommodate. So an addition was built off the new entrance hall - a kind of enclosed kitchen porch. New construction allowed for wraparound windows and higher ceilings than is typical in colonial homes, flooding the space with light. The room is a country version of the townhouse kitchens for which Elizabeth is known.

The owners worked with Elizabeth Roberts and ERA's director of interior design Robin Rathmann-Noonan on the kitchen cabinetry and chose a simple Shaker design painted in 'Pigeon' by Farrow & Ball. This warm blue-grey sets the palette for the rest of the house. Because they were keeping so much of the original architecture, Robin felt the decoration had to live within that style - statement pieces of contemporary furniture would not have worked.