Beirut, Lebanon. Brussels, Belgium. Edinburgh, Scotland. London. Judith Pierpont has lived all over the world, so when she decided to tackle a whole-house makeover in the Midwest -- she splits her time between Chicago and Minneapolis -- she applied some of the lessons she learned in those many exotic places to a little house in Orono that's now known as the Barn at Wolsfeld Woods. The project began as a 1,500 square-foot rambler built in the 1950s on property adjacent to a wooded nature preserve in Orono, but she transformed it into a 3,800-square-foot house with gambrel-style rooflines and 18-foot ceilings that suggest it was once a barn -- a notion she developed while living in a guest house that had once been a stable while her 1870s main house on Long Lake was being refurbished.

Pierpont, who runs a design business called Palace Parcels, tackled this project not as a place to live, but as a spec house.

Debbie McNally, RE/Max Results, has the listing. She's at 612-388-1790.

JIM BUCHTA