Welcome to Turkey Hill: See Inside Martha's First House

Take a tour with Martha of her previous Connecticut home, Turkey Hill.

The front door was painted green at one time.

An early photograph of the farmstead, which had been rented out before we bought it.

We did lots of excavating and sculpting of the land after we added another two-acre parcel in 1975. We constructed a barn, a chicken coop, a garden shed, and a free-standing garage.

Little by little, the farmland took on a more designed appearance -- the pool was walled in, as seen here in the snow; the roadside was protected by a beautiful stone wall; and many of the trees and shrubs, steel trellises, and tuteurs were added for symmetry and to establish an axis of vision for the four-acre property.

I laid the wide path of old brick that led to the front door and planted a broad allee of boxwood on both sides; after the house was painted the color of drabware, it settled into the landscape nicely.

I once painted the hall with a mural in the style of Rufus Porter but never completed it. In 2002, Eric Beare created this grisaille mural.

When we bought Turkey Hill, the smokehouse (a closet next to the north chimney) still smelled of country ham.

We converted one of the four bedrooms into a closet; each of the remaining three had a four-poster bed.

The kitchen underwent two major renovations, the first by Andy and me and a more professional one in the late 1990s.

The dining room's French chandelier will hang in the summer house in Bedford. The Irish Hepplewhite chairs served as a prototype for the ring-back chairs in my line by Bernhardt, and many people now have copies of these beautiful chairs in their homes.

Andy and I originally concentrated on creating a large kitchen with a dining area; the sycamore wood for the cupboards came from Massachusetts, and I found the pot rack at a tag sale -- a nearly identical picture was the opening spread of my 1982 book, "Entertaining."

In the late 1990s, I finally had the kitchen professionally renovated; the new color scheme of white and pale green was a welcome change.

The brick-floored mudroom at the rear of the house was constantly transformed by the Living decorating team; here, it is a wicker and chintz sitting room.

The center hall underwent several transformations; the mural was changed, and the floor, first stenciled by me with dark-green diamonds, finally wore so thin it was replaced with new plain pumpkin pine boards.

The wide center hall was one of Turkey Hill's nicest features. The stairway was long, but nicely proportioned and easy to climb.

I spent a great deal of time in the vegetable gardens, originally attempting to grow all that our family would need during the long growing season.

This small 16-foot lean-to taught me a great deal about four-season gardening, and I ultimately added two more larger freestanding greenhouses.

The chicken coop was home to about 80 excellent laying hens and roosters; the eggs made all the labor and tender loving care they required more than worth it.