Old Virginia farmhouse gets Park Avenue treatment

Cosmopolitan career woman and newlywed Tara Briggs moved to a 40-acre farm in Waterford, Va., in June, but unlike the character in the old TV sitcom “Green Acres” who kissed Park Avenue style goodbye, she hired a designer to transform a farmhouse into a glamorous country estate.

The nearly 10,000-square-foot fieldstone house sits on a sprawling property with two ponds, streams and a barn. When Tara and her husband, Jerry Briggs, purchased the home in November, they knew they would gut the place, leaving no signs of the country interior.