Philadelphia Home: Peggy Brehman’s Renovated Newtown Square Dairy Barn
Renovation: We think it was built about 1850 as a single-story dairy barn. When we first looked at it, it had been improved into living space, but we came in and took out walls and opened it up.
Floors: They’re reclaimed floors from a tobacco mill down in Tennessee. They call them “character oak” because they have checks, knots, wormholes and nailholes, which we love.
Island: It’s 12-by-nine-and-a-half feet. We found two rather large slabs of granite that are book-matched together, so the grains go out in the same patterns from the middle. You can’t even tell that it’s not one big slab.
Color theory: The island is painted a custom color that I developed from an antique milk-paint color.
Light fixtures: I wanted to be able to see through them to keep the open flow. These were custom-made in California.
Horse weathervanes: The one on the right was up on the 1810 barn we used to own. The left one came off the oldest barn in Berwyn. It’s American folk art.
Bottle collections: There used to be an old glass dump in the woods out back, and we found a lot of the bottles and mason jars out there when cleaning up. I collect mason jars because they have the patent date of November 30th on them, which is my husband’s birthday.
How we live in this space: It’s exactly like what most people say: If you have a big kitchen, it’s where you spend 90 percent of your time. And we do.
