Skip Weisenburger / The Day

• A wealth of windows makes this post-and-beam Cape home sunny and warm.

In 1938, BETTE DAVIS won an Academy Award for her role in "Jezebel," the Yankees clinched the World Series and Alfred Miner laid claim to 60 acres of rolling farmland in North Stonington. The land itself came with an especially affordable price in 1938, for earlier in the year another notable event had occurred: a hurricane that struck coastal Connecticut left its unfettered landscapes battered and marred.

Over the years, Miner, whose ancestors were among the original settlers of the town, established a homestead, put eight glistening ponds into the property, and with his wife Shirley had a family.

More recently he was proud to participate in an important new project on part of the original 60 acres - the construction of a post-and-beam Cape home in which his son, Douglas, and daughter-in-law Elaine, now live. The seven-and-a-half acres that now belong to the younger Miners include two ponds and a country menagerie of sheep and ducks.

"Doug had always intended to build a post-and-beam home on this land," explained Elaine, a project manager for Analysis & Technology in New London. A commercial fisherman by trade, Doug has a strong affinity for wood structures and builds simple yet graceful wood furniture in his spare time. His creations fill the living room and several other nooks and crannies in the airy home.

The Miners contacted builder Don 

"We worked and saved and worked and saved," Elaine said. She considers herself and her husband an average couple, and she remembered eliminating other builders one by one until they found Barber, whose ideas were within their reach. They were also intent on having the house built soundly from the ground up.

As Elaine noted, "We're planning on being here the rest of our lives. It's not like we'll be moving on to something else."

The couple plans on making additions in the future - a garage, a sunroom and a deck are possibilities. They asked Barber to take this growth into account when he designed the Cape.

Their desired specifications also included an open living room/dining room plan, a mudroom, three bedrooms, two bathrooms and a gallery of large windows - the better to see the expansive fields, woods and wildlife right outside their door.

Barber and his team poured the foundation last summer; 10 weeks later the couple was able to move in. "Once the frame went up, the rest happened pretty quickly," Elaine recalled. The whole family pitched in to help get the place ready. Elaine herself sanded and oiled all the first-floor beams and primed and painted the walls; Doug did those on the second floor's vaulted ceilings. She also credited her father-in-law with much of the project's success.

"I supervised," he said modestly.

Though the second floor awaits a number of finishing touches, the home feels complete and comfortable. Much of this feeling is attributable to well-arranged furniture, pleasing textiles and decorative accessories.

The warm wood of the kitchen cabinets, ordered from Texas, coexists with soft rose countertops and terra-cotta floor tiles handmade in Mexico. The theme extends to the open dining room, where perky framed prints of a cow and pig add a humorous touch.

Vibrantly green plants occupy many a corner. In a small den off the living 

Elaine knows that further embellishments will come with more working, more saving, For now, though, she likens the property to a "field of dreams."

"We wanted a house with room to grow," she reiterated.

Undoubtedly, this idyllic patch of North Stonington has room for a few more Miners.