List Price: $2.97 million
The Property: Twelve years ago, Doug and Lucinda Hanover bought a little 1880s Barrington Hills farmhouse with a rhubarb patch out front. What they have now is a 6,000-square-foot home that incorporates the property’s old barn as a two-story family room—but that farmhouse is still out front, along with (come spring) the rhubarb patch.

Working with New York architect Carol Maryan, the Hanovers created an entirely new home that connects the original 1,200-square-foot farmhouse to its barn—whose rough-hewn beams give the family room the look of a location shoot for the Pottery Barn catalog. The home’s main entrance is on the side, providing a direct route to that centerpiece room, but also leaving the original roadside front of the house the way locals remember it. Pam Weinert, the Hanovers’ real-estate agent, says the property had once been the site of a popular organic farm stand.

As you will see in the video (hosted this week by Rochelle Vayo Adkinson, the host of CLTV’s “HomesPlus”), the home has two master suites and five other bedrooms, a big country kitchen, and several porches that extend the living space out into the surrounding gardens. There is also a guesthouse with an outdoor shower, and a small stone building that used to be a calving barn but has more recently been used for dinner parties. “It all makes me think of Tuscany,” says Weinert, who confesses that she has already approached several of Chicago’s celebrity chefs about buying the property as a combination home-and-restaurant or home-and–TV studio.

Barrington Hills is horse country, with a network of more than 90 miles of horse trails winding through the countryside. This property’s “new” barn—actually a reconstructed antique barn brought in from Pennsylvania—accommodates four horses, and there are paddocks and a riding ring on the five-acre property.

Price Points: The Hanovers, who are relocating to another state now that their children are grown, initially listed the house in June 2009 for $3.2 million. When they bought the place in 1999, Weinert says, the buildings were all dilapidated; at the time, the couple paid $400,000, largely for the land.

Listing Agent: Pam Weinert at Re/Max of Barrington; 847-899-3782 or pamweinert@gmail.com