LOVE AFFAIR BEAUTY & HARD WORK

Leigh recalls she had to cajole her husband into coming east to search for a house in which to create a new business venture. She wasn’t sure he would like this one. “As we walked in, I saw him gradually fall in love with this woman—and [the house] is a woman. It’s a ‘she’ in his mind, definitely.”

They both knew they’d found the right place to build their dream. Mark threw himself into restoration projects—for instance, tung-oiling every square inch of the pine paneling by hand. “Which is why we have a running joke that she really is the woman in his life, and that I’m the ‘other woman’,” Leigh says, “because Mark and the house know each other so intimately, and they have a love affair going.”

“If I never have to smell tung oil again in my life, I’ll be a very happy person,” Mark answers. He also took out, refurbished, and reinstalled all the radiators, which now work perfectly. He removed and replaced broken panes of glass from an estimated 75 windows, most with at least 10 lights per top sash: “I became a really good glazier.”