Their Own Eden

The blue 1840 farmhouse nagged at Scott Eller and Kelly Weiss. They had traveled from Florida for Thanksgiving with Eller’s family and impulsively toured the gated Bath colonial on a lush wooded lot. As they went through, they looked at each other, dazed. They weren’t considering leaving sunny Florida for often gray Ohio, but this was their dream home.

“It’s exactly what we were going to build for our own house,” Weiss says.

So in early 2016, they moved in. The shift aligned with their desire to be closer to Eller’s mom in Barberton after his father died.

“It’s a great environment. It will nurture us, and that will enable us to nurture your mom,” Weiss said to Eller.

That it has. The couple has hosted Thanksgiving and other get-togethers on the tranquil 4.7 acres with a creek and waterfall.

“What it represents is a way of life that is relaxed and pensive about your environment,” Weiss says.

Explore their farmhouse and four other distinctive homes and a garden on the 41st Bath Volunteers for Service Annual Home Tour May 24. The benefit tour includes a luncheon and style show. Last year’s tour raised over $22,000 for 28 local charities. The stop at the farmhouse will also feature dogs available for adoption from One of a Kind Pets Rescue. Before the tour, the couple gives us an exclusive sneak peek of their stunning home.

Time Tested

With 178 years of history, the house has imperfections all over, like tiny holes and splits in exposed wood beams or cigar burns on the creaky hardwood floor. Weiss insists these add character.

“We didn’t want to redo the floors and get rid of that history,” he says.

Instead, they teak-oiled the floor so imperfections show through. Preserving that history means keeping a piece of Bath’s past alive too. From 1897 to 1915, the house was a post office and Worden General Store that sold penny candy, according to the Bath Country Journal. That family owned the house for 144 years and operated a 150-acre farm on the property.

The couple honors that rich history in their home by incorporating pieces salvaged from the barn, or “little treasures,” as Weiss calls them. There’s a wooden feed bin that now acts as an end table with a lamp and a Dutch colonial vase in the great room, and an 1800s weathered tack trunk that holds a lamp, an equestrian photo, a white orchid and candlesticks in the dining room. Weiss is handy, so he repurposed wood from an old corn crib in the barn into a thin coffee table with three glass vases of baby’s breath that adds rugged elegance.

The two brought furniture from Florida, eclectic pieces like twin tan leather easy chairs, airy white Restoration Hardware couches and a dark wood desk. Plaid curtains made by Eller’s sister-in-law, a red brick fireplace, myriad paintings of hunt and country scenes, and photos of Weiss doing dressage give the great room a rustic yet refined vibe.

Bigger Dreams

While their furniture is mostly classic, the couple had a few nautical items, like a ship painting and boat chest, to transform what they call the “sleeping porch” guest room. When the windows overlooking the waterfall are open, Eller attests that there’s no better lullaby. “It’s a great sleep machine,” he says.

Beside a wooden linen press, there’s an old laundry chute. As the two settled in, they discovered these covert nooks and crannies, including a teeny cabinet on an overhang over the master bed.

If the couple has their way with remodeling, the master will swap with the guest room on the opposite end of the hall, expand with an addition, as well as the kitchen below, and the sleeping porch will become a cozy sunroom.

In the kitchen, they already started the remodel with quartz countertops and a farmhouse sink. They added reclaimed details like padded bench kitchen table seating filled with inviting pillows Weiss fashioned from burlap coffee sacks from Savannah, Georgia.

“Farmhouses to me are just comfortable,” Eller muses.

The pair envisions rehab in the basement too: a wine room in place of an empty stone room. They have transformed the main room into a tasteful man cave that features an existing stone wall of higgledy-piggledy boulders that makes this room the most breathtaking in the house.

Kelly used the corn crib wood to make wainscoting and a wooden mantle with crackled blue paint that crowns a stone fireplace. Deer antlers flanking the walls, 1800s half-sawn log ceiling beams and a roaring fire evoke the feel of a hunting lodge.

Meeting Place

The couple loves their boxer, Finnigan, so they added a fence for him to roam freely. That meant clearing thick brush that covered the yard. They also cut away a grassy bank of the waterfall to make a sitting area that will have Adirondack chairs and a fire pit overlooking the creek and tree canopy.

“You can’t see anything when the leaves are up. It’s gorgeous,” Weiss says.

When rehabbing the barn, they discovered a treasured old buggy wheel and horse harnesses. Now, the weathered wooden barn houses a banquet table underneath a grand antler chandelier where family and friends gather for parties.

They envision this barn being a guesthouse with two bedrooms, a bathroom, kitchen and modern stone fireplace with French doors that open to a patio and a reflecting pool with cherry trees, a nod to Weiss’ time in Washington, D.C. They see their home as a retreat that allows them to cherish nature and time with loved ones.

“ It’s about family and friends, and nurturing one another, and living in an environment that is rejuvenating,” Weiss says.