home takes time | exterior stone

i recently read in a design article that farmhouse design is out. as far as i’m concerned, i’m more than okay with that declaration but the reality of building a new home located in the middle of amish farmland and organic farms, i wanted our home to feel like it’s been here for years, nestled on this hillside. part of the social, cultural and physical landscape. I attempted to root our design in country living.

in gathering the inspiration for our home, I found myself drawn to spaces and design that were simple, timeless, functional, across cultures, truly the essence of country and folk living. our design, while modern, it is based off farmhouse and country homes.

one of my most favorite books i found at the library which i used as inspiration, i loved so much that i bought a secondhand copy off of thrift books, is called The Way We Live in the Country. i return to it time and time again to inform the design of our spaces and now as we are styling and bringing in pieces for our home.

i love this book because it displays elements of country homes across the globe, how folks across time have built homes to create simple and functional spaces that cultivate space for enjoying the landscape and sinking into a slower pace of life. to me what defines this style

traveling in Northern Italy this spring, reignited my passion for design, architecture, and exterior spaces. I think it’s important to understand how what is regional to you, what materials are local to you + can be sourced more locally, can truly make a look or style feel complete. What is used in one location can be defined by what skills craftspeople in your area have, or what materials stand up better in certain climates and locales.

one element of our design that i was so excited to incorporate, one i adore on my travels to italy this year, timeless and grounded was the use of stone on the exterior. how to do that in a way that felt like it had been here for years and also helped with an element of our design that changed: the walkout basement.

this is where polycor hardscapes came into play. If you’ve been following along with our home build process you know that I did not want a walkout basement. Primarily for the added costs and the change to the exterior of our home. I wanted our home to feel nestled into the hillside, a part of the landscapes and to walk off the porches into the prairie. We still have that feeling on the north front porch and the west back deck. But because of the slope of our site, the eastern exterior of the house needed a walkout basement.

enter exterior stone. If we were going to have a three story view of the house, I really wanted to ground this element, cut the visual so it wouldn’t be wall of siding, and make this element feel like it had been here for ages, and turned to old farmhouses for inspiration. We went with vertical board and batten siding and horizontal siding to further cut the feeling of an elongated side.

here are some of my inspiration photos.

Incorportating Rockford Blend thin veneer in Indiana Limestone from Polycor Hardscape was more than I could have asked for in terms of giving the exterior a warm, farmhouse feel. The inclusion of natural material gives the whole house a sense of groundedness.

When the stone was being installed by the masons, I kept hearing them comment about the ease of installation, superior quality, the stones not breaking when cut. I also loved the limestone is regional to us here in the midwest, quarried out of Bloomington and Bedford Indiana, so it didn’t have to travel far for our use. I love that it echos old European homes, cities and villages, made of stone, using natural materials harmonizes with the natural surroundings, adds longevity and timelessness to a new home.