They tapped their regular collaborators, the Toronto-based design studio and woodworking shop Studio Junction, for work throughout the home, commissioning a series of pieces including free-standing kitchen elements. A local woodworker handled one of the most significant changes — one dictated by the structure’s strange history. What’s now the living room was once a garage with large doors on the front and back walls. “They used to bring the horse and buggy in,” Baker explained. “They would drop off the gear, and then drive through.” One of these doors was converted into a huge window, framing one of the four apple trees on the property. The room is now oriented around this vista. Sofas — one mohair, another sheepskin — angle toward the window as though it were a big-screen TV.

The window makes a tidy metaphor for the type of life Baker and Daoust are building at the Stone House. While some country homes merely adopt a rural aesthetic, the decisions the couple have made ensure a truly different pace. The bathroom, anchored by an antique Carrara marble tub, lacks a shower, and the kitchen stove is wood burning. “Our attitude is, what else do you have going on? You might as well spend three hours lighting up an oven and waiting for it to get to temperature,” said Baker. Nowhere is their commitment more evident than the communal bedroom occupying the home’s entire second story. When Baker and Daoust took possession of the home, this level was divided by flimsy boards into a series of tiny sleeping quarters. “You could almost push the walls down,” said Baker. “It was so satisfying when, in one day, it became this open space.” The kids’ matching beds sit perpendicular to Baker and Daoust’s, where everyone sleeps together in the winter.