As you drive down Main Street beyond the edge of town, cross two rivers and two train tracks, and pass a large cornfield, you might ponder why the quiet darkness of the country makes some people feel safe and others scared.

While deciding which category you fall into, you pull into the driveway of Tracy and Kim Stearns and get a hearty greeting from their dogs, Hogan and Baron. Soon the eggplant-colored home, the lush ferns, the crawling wisteria, the old orchard, the busy goldfish pond, even the ramshackle “mouse house” envelop you in coziness and wonder.

Wanting to get back to their rural roots, Tracy and Kim Stearns moved from their West Plaza neighborhood to this home outside of Eudora, Kan., 12 years ago.
They had their work cut out for them. Parts of the little gray farmhouse were rotting.

“The more you dug into it, the scarier it was,” Kim says, recalling a tearful home video taken during the renovation.

But they were attracted to the beauty of the land — the old orchard at the top of the hill, the stone wall that lines the entrance and yard, the proximity to the storied Tonganoxie Sandstone, the quiet.

“We like the country life,” Tracy says. “We thought, ‘Let’s move out of the city.’”

Their friends like the country, too. Most weekends the Stearns have visitors, so they say living 45 minutes from Kansas City feels a little like being on vacation all the time. That is, if by “vacation” you mean “hard labor.”

To accommodate the workload a farm demands, Kim switched to part-time employment. A horticulturalist, she cultivates the garden and the lush plants growing on the deck and in the lily pond, and mows three acres of the five-acre property to keep the snakes at bay.

Tracy works in town as a principal of 360 Architecture.

Originally, this home was going to be his office. The couple planned to build a new house farther back on the property. But when they finished renovating the farmhouse, they found that it was just what they needed.

The Stearns gutted the house and raised the roof to add an upstairs loft, which holds the master bedroom, a guest room and a full bath.

On the outside, they embellished the house with corrugated metal and painted the wood a deep purple — giving it the look of an old barn with artistic flair.
They repeated the corrugated metal detail in the upstairs shower — a unique alternative to tile and a nice complement to the recycled turquoise tub.

Surprising elements like that one are as plentiful in this house as caterpillars in a cornfield:
• The bathroom upstairs also has back-to-back sinks — little ones from an old school. This allows two people to brush their teeth or shave at the same time — or splash water at each other if they’re still grade school kids at heart. In lieu of the typical medicine cabinet looking glass, Tracy clipped a mirror onto an audio pole beside the sinks.
• The kitchen island actually is a jewelry display case from Old Theatre Architectural Salvage Company. The Stearns store pots and pans in the hidden cabinets and apple-green pottery under the glass top. The cabinet fronts in this room also are antique salvage items.
• Glass shelves in the kitchen and downstairs bathroom rest on copper pipes — the kind typically used for plumbing.
• The downstairs bathroom sink rests in a carved-out antique buffet.
• The backsplash in the kitchen and downstairs shower are handcrafted mosaics that include shards of vibrant tile, doorknobs from Tracy’s parents’ old home, antique marbles and a funky pin that Kim wore in the 80s.
• Downstairs, the floor is wafer board. This is a material you might remember from such places as underneath your carpet. But it is perfect for farm life because dirt doesn’t show on it, water doesn’t damage it and it has a fun and hearty texture.
• Despite modern flairs, the house still feels like a farmhouse. The hedge apple and gourd centerpiece in the kitchen and the lush garden surrounding the home contribute to that feeling. So does the view of the sprawling hill beyond the ramshackle shed out back — which Kim calls “the mouse house,” for its tiny residents, who know better than to venture into the main house with cats Serge, Mr. Boots and Mimi on the lookout.
• Perhaps most surprising is how the contemporary layout of the home — with its open floor plan, high ceilings in the living room, and modern art throughout — feels so cozy.

“It’s contemporary, but in a recycled, warm way,” Tracy explains.

It also helps that the home is a modest size.

Of all the concepts that Tracy brings from his own home to the houses of clients, smallness is his favorite.

He tries to convince them that thinking big doesn’t mean building big. Often he will take the floor plans for a 10,000-square-foot home and draw something small in the middle. He’ll tell clients, “That’s the size of my entire house.” Then he directs them to take a drive across two railroad tracks, two rivers and a giant cornfield.
“I bring them here to show them how nice a small home can be,” he says. “A couple days later, they’ll call and say, you’re right. It’s too big.”

Perhaps that’s the secret to feeling safe in the vast expanse of the country — or wherever you reside: You need to carve out a cozy little life for yourself, kind of like the creatures in the mouse house.

Resources:

Designer: 360 Architecture
Contractor: MBF Construction
Excavation: Bruer Excavating
Lumber: Schutte Lumber
Sheetrock: Kevin Hillhouse
Roofing: Rick Kelley
Guttering: Maxwell Gutters
Appliances: Contractor’s Appliance
Carpeting: Bigelow/Karastan
Glass & Mirrors: Masland
Heating & Cooling: Climate Control
Plumbing: Charlie MacNemee
Plumbing Fixtures: Dorfman Plumbing
Electrician: Rbis & Wittus
Home Security: Wornall Electronics