Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette photos About 30 years ago, Marcia Brissett and her late husband, Frank, bought a barn, which dates to the 1860s, and built a new home inside it. "The idea was to keep the same imprint and thereby minimize the environmental impact," she says. Click photo for larger image.

On a nice day, Marcia Brissett is apt to leave the door open so she can enjoy the breeze through her sun-dappled living room. And who could blame her? Sitting there is almost like sitting outside, what with all the oversized windows and rough-hewn timbers. But just in case your mom was wondering, no, she wasn't born in a barn.

She does, however, happen to live in one, and a pretty cool one at that. Actually, it's probably more precise to say that the house she and her husband, Frank, built nearly 30 years ago in West Deer is inside a barn.

Most people who convert barns into residences do so by rearranging the insides and altering the exterior. The Brissetts, however, left everything in situ -- original hand-hewn beams and sliding doors and even the ladder to the hay loft -- and built a house inside it.

As a result, the Pennsylvania bank barn serves as a sort of "envelope" for the house, says Ms. Brissett, a technical writer. From the outside, in fact, it's easy to assume that the barn, which dates from the 1860s and features a cantilevered forebay, is, well, just a barn.

"The idea was to keep the same imprint and thereby minimize the environmental impact," she says.

Hued timber used in the post and beam construction of the barn. Click photo for larger image.

Inspired by the funky, earth-friendly dwellings she and her husband had admired in the book "Woodstock Handmade Houses," the couple -- who were then in their early 30s -- were also looking to trade in their traditional house in Edgewood for something a little more unconventional.

Having spent a lot of time around horses as a child growing up in Ford City, Armstrong County, Ms. Brissett had a soft spot for barns. So when Mr. Brissett saw the barn advertised in the real estate section one Sunday with the notation "can be converted into a house," it was like an offering, she says.

Today, the idea of reusing a building in a way that's kind to the environment is one of the cornerstones of sustainable development. But back in the mid '70s, when the couple undertook the project, there was no understanding of what's now known as green building. The Brissetts, though, were lucky to know people who could help turn their dream into a reality.

For starters, they had a friend who owned land in West Virginia and could supply wood. And they also knew Jeff Davis, a talented young architect who was hungry for his first solo residential project. He not only embraced the couple's belief that the new house should respect the barn's historic setting, but was happy to design something that kept all its original architecture in place.

	Rail-less oak steps lead into Marcia Brissett's sunken living room, which features a large wood-burning fireplace set at an angle (bottom left of steps) and a soaring 35-foot cathedral ceiling. Click photo for larger image.

Now the principal of a firm in Raleigh, N.C., Mr. Davis actually slept in the barn before he designed the house to see how the light and air flowed through it.

With limited financial resources, the Brissetts knew they were destined to do much of the work themselves. That included felling the oak and cherry trees that would be used in the interior and hauling them to the saw mill to be cut up into pieces and milled into floor boards. But they viewed the project, which took about two years, as a labor of love. The only thing they struggled with was their new role as housing revolutionaries......

"We thought everyone would be doing this," Ms. Brissett recalls with a laugh. "We had no idea how long it was going to take for these ideas to catch on."

It wouldn't be without a few headaches. Locating someone to insure the "barn house," as the place quickly became known, proved difficult and costly. Finding a carpenter who could deftly incorporate the barn's off-kilter angles and surfaces into Mr. Davis' design was even harder. But providence was on their side: the aptly named Bill Carpenter proved himself to be a "measurement genius," as well as a wonderfully skilled artisan.

"He did everything," says Ms. Brissett. "From the kitchen cabinets to the roof to the deck."

Marcia Brissett pulls one of the large doors to cover the back entrance of her home. Click photo for larger image.

In their naivete, the couple had also assumed the 11-acre property would have a sustainable water source; it was only after closing that they discovered it didn't. But no cause for panic. They simply called in both a dowser, or "water witch," and a geologist to determine the best place to dig a well. (They went with the geologist, who came equipped with mining maps and suggested a well 100 feet from the house.)

With its creative use of light and air, the three-bedroom house -- which contains five separate levels -- is one of the most visually arresting places you'll see. Windows and glass doors cover at least one-third of the wall space, and a giant skylight brightens the main entrance, which is about 20 feet off the ground, at the top of an open staircase.

Wide, rail-less oak steps lead into the sunken living room, which features a large wood-burning fireplace set at an angle and a soaring, 35-foot cathedral ceiling; the gleaming cherry floors were laid at a diagonal for added interest. A mirror to the left of a vivid abstract painting by Randolph Solak titled "Primal Soup" reflects the windows on the west side of the house so that you can see the fields behind you.

"My husband, whose hobby was music, wanted the room to hold potential for theater," says Ms. Brissett, "so the stairs go up like bleachers."

The kitchen cabinets were crafted from wormy chestnut that had been stored in a barn in Kittanning for about 40 years; the massive paneled doors that lead to the deck were gleaned from an old mansion in Kittanning, along with the banister that decorates the second-level office space. The barn, built in 1990, which houses her horse, Artie, is another example of adaptive reuse. It originally served as a machine barn for the farm next door.

	At the front entrance, the exterior of the home is at the left and and the barn interior to the right. Click photo for larger image.

Just as interesting is the open "bridge" that extends from the original barn walls through the center of the house. A large circular cutout provides a lovely view of the garden below and a small garden house made from another barn. It also symbolically "connects" the old structure to the new, says Ms. Brissett.

Despite its wide-open spaces, the house is fairly energy-efficient. The barn's original sliding wood doors can be closed like shutters over the new glass doors during the winter to keep out cold air, and a 1,000-gallon cistern collects rainwater, which is then used to water the garden. Rather than tear off the original slate roof when it needed to be replaced about five years after moving in, they simply laid a terne-coated stainless steel roof on top of it, bolstering its insulation.

"And it doesn't have to be painted," she says.

Although she and her two children enjoy the home, Ms. Brissett allows that living in a barn house isn't for everyone. Take insects, for instance. You better not mind them because they're everywhere. Others might be intimidated by all the open space or the secluded location.

"It dictates a certain lifestyle," she says.

But for her and Frank, who died about eight years ago, the experience was a great one.

"Living in a barn isn't like being closed up in a house," she says. "You can move with such ease in every direction, out and back in again. It's permeable, almost."