One Nail at a Time | Creative Rhode Island Rehabs from Sakonnet Farm & Stays

This is no one-shot fixer-upper saga. It’s more of a renovation epic.

I’m standing in the doorway of what appears to be a pretty one-room schoolhouse, dropped here from 1800. The bell is silent, though its dangling rope is tempting. The front door has a twin right beside it: Boys enter through one opening, girls through the other. A field unfurls to my left, and the smell of hay, not uncommon here in Tiverton Four Corners, Rhode Island, hangs in the air.

A chilling cry rings out from Sakonnet Farms, a picturesque tumble of buildings on the other side of the schoolhouse, where eggs and jams are for sale. Moments later, under a cloudless blue sky, I stare down a peacock. He appears to be laying claim to the front yard, and who am I to argue?

“I call him Curious George,” says Kristin Silveira, when she stops by. “We can’t seem to catch him, but he always wants to know what’s going on.”

In fact, this is no longer a schoolhouse. It’s a modern-day vacation rental that Kristin, 43, and her husband, Adam, 46, restored to exterior authenticity in 2011. Inside, it’s my fantasy one-floor living—open and airy, 1,075 square feet, with a stainless steel kitchen and granite countertops, plus a generous helping of vintage memorabilia: wooden desks, roll-up maps, and antique report cards.

The Silveiras also own the adjacent Sakonnet Farms and its mini menagerie of pigs, goats, chickens, ducks, and one errant peacock. Free-range eggs in rainbow colors sit in my fridge, a perk of staying here. Meanwhile, we sit at the large kitchen island as Kristin explains how the schoolhouse was a catalyst for their B&B dynasty, an assortment of fixer-uppers that all hunker nicely under the Sakonnet Farm & Stays name.

“We thought we’d fix it up and do a year-round rental,” Kristin remembers. And it was supposed to be easy—the exterior of the building had been freshly remodeled with a conventional front door and windows when they bought it, so only the gutted interior needed work. She points to a sepia-toned photo, hanging on the wall. “Then we heard it used to be a one-room schoolhouse.”

Adam did the research, and learned it was true. “Then we had to ask ourselves, did we really want to take apart a finished exterior?” She looks at me, knowing it’s a crazy question. In the end, Adam made a scale drawing of the front, and they re-created the schoolhouse, right up to its cupola. Inside, they laid 10-inch-wide plank pine, installed cupboards and lacquered them deep olive, built a granite-topped island, and painted everywhere. “It took six months of construction, another six to decorate,” she says, mostly with antiques snagged on eBay. The 100-year-old cast iron bell came from a one-room schoolhouse in Ohio.

Meanwhile, they decided to try vacation rentals, instead of residential. The online response was immediate. “We had schoolteachers coming,” says Kristin. “One woman came from California and stayed for a month. We were like, ‘Whoa!’” Buoyed by their success, and just a few months after opening Tiverton Schoolhouse No. 1, the young couple tackled an unfinished new colonial in Little Compton … and then a magnificent estate in Adamsville—

But wait a minute.

How did they manage this? The Silveiras were raising four children (Alyssa, now 20; Megan, 19; Jami, 17; Jonathan, 15). She’s an RN; he’s a supervisor for the electric company, with an engineering background (in other words, don’t try this at home). Plus they were rehabbing their own house in Little Compton.

“I guess we like to work,” says Kristin, in a classic case of New England understatement. Also, they look for great deals. And the kids help out. Oh, and they do everything—plumbing, electrical, carpentry, painting, septic. They even dug their own swimming pool. “I hope you have a backhoe,” I say, half kidding. She smiles. “We made jokes about Adam and his big toy, but it’s the best investment we ever made.”

Back to that half-finished hulk in Little Compton that was waiting to be transformed into a vacation stay that today sleeps eight and is elegantly decked out in Silveira-favored earth tones. “It was abandoned, unfinished, dead birds inside,” Kristin recalls. “We put in a crazy lowball offer, and they took it. We worked nights and weekends for 18 months.” Local artwork hangs throughout, all for sale, thanks to their partnership with the South Coast Artists network. “This was for a different market,” she explains. “Extended families, plus it’s Little Compton—some people are specifically looking for that.”

They took a break. Traveled some, attended to the rentals, caught their breath.

And then … history came knocking in earnest. When we step inside the magnificent 200-year-old Samuel Church Estate in Adamsville, with its historic tower, Kristin lights up. “This place got us hooked on historic preservation. That part was so exciting—to breathe new life into something so old.”

The elegant Federal is cloaked in weathered shingles. Light streams in through wavy glass that blurs the view like rain. There’s a beehive oven, wide pine floors. But that’s not what kept them coming back, making offers for a year. “It was the tower,” she says, as we stare at the white-shingled water tower, a defining feature of Adamsville. “And then,” she adds, “it’s like we woke up and found this amazing, beautiful house on the property.”

For the third time, they tackled a kitchen. Peeled wallpaper for months. “We removed all the windows,” she tells me (an exhausting number of 12-over-12s). In the living room, they lifted up the floor and found the original pine boards underneath.

“We worked from November 2016 to June,” Kristin remembers. “We didn’t anticipate how long it would take.” When they got a request to host “a little wedding thing,” they hurried to finish. With time running out, Adam ran over the granite countertop laid out on the lawn, although you’d never know it, looking at the shorn corner. And when he cut the hole for the sink, “the entire piece broke in half.” It’s funny now—and the seam looks intentional—but, “The wedding party was coming in and we were screwing on wall plates. The caterer was helping!”

We’re laughing as we walk to the tower. This past winter, they insulated it, added interior walls, and painted. It’s rented to Kathrine Lovell, an artist who’s landed the most inspiring workspace a creative type could ask for. “Here’s one thing you should know,” she tells me. “Kristin’s the glue in a lot of town projects, even though she’s got so much going on. That’s her superpower.”

But in fact, there’s a shared superpower at work. The Silveiras manage to make it all look effortless. Even fun. Kind of like Tom Sawyer did, when he painted the fence. I suspect that’s partly how they got their kids to lend a hand over the years. This superpower is at work even now, as I climb into my car.

“I think I’ll just stay for a while and weed,” says Kristin, her eyes flicking over the flower bed as she plucks the spindly offenders. And I can’t help it—I want to pitch in.