A DC Designer Restores an 1830s Virginia Farmhouse Without Erasing It

Washington, DC–based designer Melissa Colgan bought an 1830s farmhouse in Sperryville, Virginia, in 2023 and renovated it around one rule: it must not feel renovated. The 1,200-square-foot house, once the home and office of the county doctor, sits in a town of 350 people just minutes from Shenandoah National Park in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Why an 1830s log cabin became a family home?

Colgan and her husband, Daniel Schned, moved to DC from the Midwest in 2016 and spent their weekends exploring the countryside. "One of the areas we fell in love with is Rappahannock County," Colgan says of its scenic pastures, rolling hills, and grazing cows. "It feels a world away from DC." The couple eloped at The Inn at Little Washington in 2020 and began searching for a vacation home. Three years later, a listing appeared for the farmhouse and barn.

The building carries layered history. It began in the 1830s as a single-room log cabin, gained a barn and second story in the 1890s, and received another addition in the late 1990s. "It's a very special house in Sperryville because it's where the doctor saw all his patients in the early 1900s," Colgan says. "A lot of the original details were still there. We just wanted to freshen things up a bit."

How do you renovate without leaving fingerprints?

Colgan brought in DC architect Alexander Smith of Mortar & Thatch. "The thing we aligned with from the very beginning is we didn't want it to feel like a new renovation," Smith says. "Maybe we slapped on some paint or got new countertops, but we didn't want it to seem like we were implanting foreign ideas."

The biggest structural task was the upstairs. The single bedroom came down to the studs and became two: a middle bedroom for Colgan's daughter, now two years old, and a primary room fitted with a king bed and built-in closets. "We basically took down the walls of the one bedroom, made a middle bedroom for our daughter, then eked every inch we could," Colgan says.

Downstairs, the living room retains its original 1830s chink log siding. "The room is so soulful. You just walk in and take a deep breath," she says. The design concept came from abroad: "The thing that came to mind early on was a little Russian country house or dacha. When we first saw the listing, we were in Switzerland, so that was the original seed for the design."

What fills the rooms?

The palette draws directly from the site. Colgan paired the original pine floors and log siding with ochres, reds, and blues, plus botanical and floral-patterned fabrics. "We're surrounded by mountains and flora and fauna, so I wanted the house to reflect that as well," she says.

The furnishings mix old, new, and local:

• a 1920s French fruitwood dining table
• an early American rocking chair from Ruckersville Antiques
• a BDDW sofa bought at auction, now upholstered in Décors Barbares' Roses Tchékhonine print, with butterflies across cobalt and crimson flowers

"We didn't really have anything for this house because the style is so different from our city home, so we had to start from scratch," Colgan says.

Smith reworked the mudroom and laundry near the side entrance with cupboards in hay-colored gingham skirts. In the kitchen, reconfigured appliances, new cabinets, and open shelving improved storage and traffic flow. "We were able to inch out so much in such a small space," Smith says.

What about the barn?

The barn out back, where the doctor once kept his horse for house calls across the county, once housed pigs. The previous owner renovated it into a kitchenette, an open living space, and sleeping quarters; Colgan has since layered in fabrics and antiques. "That first Thanksgiving was a real stress test," she says of the property's debut as a gathering place.

Colgan's larger argument concerns restraint. "A lot of times people come into these old houses and instead of trying to think carefully about how to make modern life function there, they blow out walls and make everything open," she says. She points instead to the weathered planks and the wavy glass in the 19th-century windows. "They are very much not energy efficient," she says, "but they are absolutely beautiful." Her example suggests that the next wave of country-house renovations may measure success by what gets kept, not replaced.