Gable-Roofed Rural Weekend Home in Connecticut

In 1997, Lisa Gray and Alan Organschi bought six and a half acres off a dirt road that winds through the undulating hills and former large dairy farms of northwestern Connecticut. The landscape— speckled with ash and cherry trees on the banks of the Bantam River—was relaxing and inviting. However, the two cramped, poorly built, and barely winterized 1970s-vintage wooden houses, one of which was where Gray, Organschi, and their two young children slept, definitely were not.