Sometime around 1850, farmers’ children attended school at this tiny Talbot County structure. Today, the only little ones scampering about inside are three-year-old Eric and six-year-old Gavin, who, explains their mother, Lauren Dianich, are capable of making enough trouble for an entire classroom of preschoolers.

Last March, Dianich and her husband, Jon, both architects and owners of the firm Atelier 11 in Easton, bought the 1,200-square-foot building. It sat in near-condemnable condition in the middle of a soybean field in Cordova, a rural farming village about ten miles north of Easton. While accustomed to living in town, the duo decided it was time to find a roomier spot, where they could experiment with creating and implementing environmentally friendly alternate building systems, like rainwater catchments for irrigation, composting toilets, and a wind-powered electrical system. “Since we can’t use our clients’ homes as guinea pigs,” explains Lauren, “we decided to use our own house as a place to experiment with design and detail.”

The house originally served as the Church Road School for grades first through seven. Sometime prior to 1940, the building was moved to the now-extinct Queen Anne’s County village of Willoughby, located between the towns of Queen Anne and Wye Mills.
It was purchased by Winchester Smith, who converted it into a general store, complete with a dance hall in the rear of the building. In 1950, Smith was murdered in the store; in 1960, it was bought and moved to its current location in Cordova to be used as a rental
property for farm workers.

“We liked the simplicity of the structure and how well it represents the archetypical Eastern Shore rural building,” says Lauren. “Anyone can see that a fancy Victorian house has potential to ‘wow’ people. But we want to show how a modest historic structure can have dignity and beauty.”

While the foundation was fairly sound, the interior finishes of the cedar-shingled structure required a complete overhaul. After stripping the ancient wallpaper, they paneled the walls in white pine filly fencing, mostly used in constructing stables; once they removed the three layers of wall-to-wall shag carpeting, they gave the wooden floorboards several coats of black paint. They replaced all the windows and added mantel molding as trim to offset the simplicity of the interior décor. Walls were edited out
to open up the petite space.

The kitchen, compact by necessity, is a 150-square-foot area that holds appliances and cabinets, which line the exterior wall, a center island, and a pine glass-front china hutch. Their tiny master bedroom, directly off the kitchen, provides just enough room for a sleigh bed and a bedside table, and the boys’ room next door fits in space-saving bunk beds and a built-in closet made out of an antique dresser. “When it gets too crowded in here, we joke that we ‘drop kick’ the kids into the field,” says Lauren. “We typically buy their clothes at secondhand stores, but we’re going to buy them really good winter clothes so that they can spend maximum time outside.”

Exposed beams highlight the adjoining living room, another sparely decorated but cozy space. The contemporary look is achieved with built-in pine bookshelves, a leather sofa and matching easy chair, and rice paper floor lanterns. Colorful Turkish area rugs add color as does an ornate camel feedbag, souvenirs from a recent trip to Istanbul. The couple admits to having shed at least half of their possessions, from family antiques to the TV, keeping only the necessities. “One of the things that was easiest to live without, which really surprised me, was electricity while we were waiting for the house to be rewired,” says Lauren. “Since summer days are so full of activity, it was a relief to light candles at 9 p.m. and be forced to have a quieter, slower pace. Normally we would have tried to work or watch TV.”

The ongoing transformation will continue “upstairs,” which, for now, is reached by an industrial ladder. The loft, or “away space,” as Lauren calls it, will eventually become a work space for the designing couple. (Lauren says that she’s gotten so adept at climbing the ladder that she no longer needs to hold on to the sides for balance.) Other away spaces on the property include the outbuildings: They’re converting the chicken coop into a playhouse for the boys and building a barn to use as a woodshop for Jon and a ballet studio for Lauren. 

Jon spent his childhood on a self-sufficient family farm in Appalachia, an influence that he’s integrating into their property. In the spring, the couple will begin transforming their twenty-seven-acre property into an organic farm, starting with installing an orchard of pear, cherry, apple, and peach trees as well as planting sunflowers and lavender and clearing pastureland for goats. “We’re fortunate that we have a small enough farm that we can experiment and hopefully make some progress, which can be shared with other farmers to help their production without the heavy use of chemicals,” says Lauren.

But this is all just the beginning of a grand experiment in country living. The couple plans to live in this house for another three years, then design and build their barn-style dream house on the back of the property. The little schoolhouse will transition into a guest house. “We’ll miss this little house,” says Lauren. “I know that the kids will really miss it since they’ve spent their developmental years here. It will always be a sentimental place for us.”