1850s barn retains rural feel while giving home 21st century luxury
Richard Panichi always wanted to live in a barn house.
He read about barns, researched barns, and looked at barns being sold in Kane and McHenry counties for more than a year. Then he elicited the services of a broker in Hampshire who located a classic English barn built in the 1850s that sat on a Wisconsin dairy farm.
"It was one of the oldest barns in Wisconsin, of which there were very few left," Panichi said. "It was what I wanted. It was in great condition and the best hand-hewn barn I could find."
Today, Richard and his wife Inna have million dollar views from their porch, which wraps around three sides of their barn house in the Huntley countryside. They look out over a Grant Wood pastoral setting that extends to the south and west as far as the eye can see.
"We're on the porch all the time; we're out here every evening," Inna Panichi said. "It's so beautiful here, especially when you look at the Black Angus cows; sometimes they're right by our garden."
The cedar porch includes a screened outdoor cooking and eating area, an incredible spot for cooking up a storm, enjoying a gourmet meal with guests and watching the sun set.
"We have gorgeous sunsets," Richard Panichi said. "The sky gets blood red here."
The couple's barn house began as a 1,100-square-foot ranch home with three bedrooms on five acres that included a small horse barn. In 2002, the Panichis purchased this ordinary home and transformed it into something extraordinary.
The frame for the barn portion of the home was moved from Wisconsin where it was carefully disassembled and put back together at its present location under the supervision of an architect and barn restoration specialist.
Panichi had the original home remodeled and expanded with reconstruction of the hand-hewn oak post-and-beam structure from Wisconsin.
"These posts are so strong that you couldn't pound a nail in it - the nail would bend," Panichi said.
The original house and the reconstructed barn were merged and finished as a modern country home using current building technologies and the finest materials and workmanship. Yet it is kept true to the history of the area and landscape.
"I like the look from the outside," Panichi said. "It fits in with the Illinois landscape."
The original living room in the ranch home remains a living room with added accent beams while the kitchen now functions as a country dining room with a large oval wood table. The two small bedrooms are now a fully equipped private health club and a guest bedroom with bar area and full bath with walk-in shower and ceramic and marble finishes.
The home features a Pottery Barn look and feel - sophisticated, yet casual and inviting.
The original home blends seamlessly with the barn structure, which is now a "wow" room housing the kitchen and great room in one cavernous space.
The gourmet kitchen showcases antique cabinets with a crackle finish, granite counters made of stone from the bottom of a river in Russia, and deep vintage-style porcelain sink that faces the great room portion of the space.
Appliances include Fisher-Paykel dishwashers, subzero refrigerator and Viking range/ovens. The room also includes a walk-in pantry, wine fridge, liquor cabinet and wine rack.
The couple can enjoy more formal meals in the adjacent dining room and informal meals at the granite counter or the outdoor dining area overlooking rear vistas.
"We live in the kitchen/great room all the time, and we're together all the time," Richard Panichi said. "We exercise in this room, read, sit with the dogs (French Brittany hunting dogs Lia and Masha), cook. But we eat most of our meals outside."
The great room's focal point is a beautiful wood paneled and beamed wall with a fireplace and media entertainment center hidden in the cabinetry. Above the fireplace and behind a giant framed mirror that swings open for access is a large flat-panel TV and surround-sound system.
A comfortable leather sofa and two oversized leather chairs sit around the fireplace. The concrete floor features hydronic heating. "We always feel warm in here," Inna Panichi said.
The loft in the barn houses a master suite that includes a mini-greenhouse, sitting area, gas stove with remote, window seat, large closet and laundry room. A unique vintage-style soaking tub on chrome legs highlights the master bath that includes a walk-in shower. The loft is outfitted as an office and library.
Garage space accommodates four cars, two in the hillside basement garage of the original home and a new two-car attached garage as part of the new structure. The new garage area has plenty of storage for freezers, sporting equipment and the like.
The rear property has a path leading to a picket-fenced coop building attached to a greenhouse frame structure used as a free-range feeding area for the owners' chickens.
Their horse is at an equestrian boarder nearby.
The entire boundary of the property has a three-board oak fence and is divided into several pastures. The original five-stall horse barn is now being used for equipment storage. The property also includes a small orchard, fenced vegetable garden, and one acre of restored wildflower prairie.
Hooked on the process of building houses - not to sell and make money, but for the love of doing it for themselves - the couple took on another project two years ago.
"We're building a house in Barrington Hills on seven acres of land on a lake, and we think it will look older than this house," Richard Panichi said. "I also have a home in Colorado that's 100 years old that I bought and restored and have had for 20 years."
The Panichis love their barn-themed home in Huntley and find it difficult to leave.
But for Richard Panichi, bottom line is, "I can't have three houses; I can't keep up with them."
Thus the home, recognized by The Conservation Foundation for its environmentally friendly landscape, is on the market for $745,000. For more information or to schedule an appointment to visit, call Mark Coleman, broker-associate with Coleman Land Co., at (630) 377-1600.