"It's actually Scottish Georgian, a more robust architecture that combines stucco and brick on a stone foundation, and the program was for 10,000 square feet compared to the original 3,500 square feet," the architect explains. The completed project offers a neat lesson on doing Georgian properly -- in both design and construction.

First, it had to be perfectly symmetrical. After all, 18th-century Georgian was the full English realization of the 16th-century Palladian ideal. Jones used a five-part composition, with the proportions of the central two-story body of the house in a double square -- twice as wide as tall.

"Combined with the projecting entry and pediment, that produces a strong verticality and anchors the house in its setting," he says. Two hipped-roofed wings, freestanding in the original, are connected to the central mass with shallow, arcaded galleries. What appear to be simple passages actually mask large living spaces behind: a media room on one side, the kitchen on the other.

Exterior materials give the house its robust Scottish turn. "We have stucco scored to look like stone blocks and then great contrast with the brick quoins (corner blocks) and belt course (a horizontal band of decorative masonry), a more articulated look than an all-brick house," Jones says. "And there are cut stone window lintels and an ashlar stone foundation."

For this project, Ilex Construction strove to find a foundation stone that was durable and suited the homeowners' taste. The builders, who visited quarries in several states, finally found a perfect match in a Vermont quarry and used a unique method of excavating the stone to obtain the right color.