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Tim Ellis was walking down the narrow farmers’ stairs in his home when his foot slipped, going right through the landing wall. Instead of patching it up, however, Tim placed a wrought-iron figure of a mischievous mouse at the hole’s entrance.

“People get a kick out of it when they come in,” says Tim, pointing to the staircase opposite the home’s front door.

Making the best of a bad situation and enhancing it with eclectic pieces of art for people to enjoy is Tim’s standard approach to renovating his farmhouse, whose quirks and overall rambling design provides a charming backdrop for casual entertaining, relaxation, and Tim’s whimsical art collection—both indoors and out.

“This house gave me a lot of freedom because there was nothing unique or old,” he says. “I could play with this house a lot more.”

Tucked into a little-known corner of York, Maine, the 1850s farmhouse was in pretty bad shape when Tim first saw it more than 30 years ago. He discovered it perched above a meadow filled with wildflowers where he used to take his children when they were young.

“It was pretty primitive,” says Tim, owner of Ellis Insurance and a York native whose family’s history has long been closely tied to the town’s own. Occasional fires were set in the boarded-up house that was once home to a commune. It had no bathroom or septic, just a pump and a three-hole privy, and a barn on the property had eventually disappeared as former owners took its timber apart to shore up the main house.

Despite the mess, Tim saw the house’s possibilities. “I thought in the back of my mind that if it came on the market I might be interested in purchasing it.”

The house did come on the market in 1978, and Tim bought it—for better or for worse.

He quickly discovered that the house was not only falling apart, but was also built in an almost haphazard manner by a farmer with little skills in construction: stair risers were different heights, and cracks brought in cold winter draughts that lifted rugs and froze the water in his glass at night. “I look back and think, ‘What the devil was I thinking?’” he laughs, but adds, “It just has a warmth to it in its crookedness.”

 The home’s advantage was that he could fix the house in the style he wanted, instead of  restoring a house under strict historic guidelines—which he understands well as a past president of the Board of Trustees for The Museums of Old York.

“It had a lot of character—nothing’s straight. It was very challenging, and it still is to some degree,” says Tim.

Renovations took a bit over 10 years and included strengthening the house’s weak structure, and blowing out walls to add 12 feet to the living room and 9 feet to the dining room. Most recently, he added a new garage and adjoining breezeway designed by Portsmouth architect Anne Whitney.

The kitchen is a true cook’s kitchen. “Everything’s out,” says Tim, who frequently cooks for guests. Pots and pans hang from a large rack over a center island, open shelves make spices easy to reach, and a full bookcase accommodates a wide variety of cookbooks for experiments in the culinary arts.

 A small staircase next to the island rises to a loft directly above the kitchen, home to a media center and Tim’s extensive music collection that includes three to four thousand albums and a growing number of CDs—with everything from Beethoven to Bjork—that can be heard from speakers in the kitchen.

An inglenook provides additional seating space in the kitchen, which is important because even though the dining room’s large oval table can fit a dozen guests, his dinner parties sometimes include up to 30 people. “I can’t tell you how many times we sit in the dining room, and people don’t want to leave,” says Tim who recalled a recent occasion when the last person left at two in the morning. Frequently he’ll host dinners to benefit some of the many charities he’s involved in, including Old York’s garden tour, where his gardens have been featured, and he’s even auctioned off a family dinner in a charity auction.

“One year I had a whole family who met here from all over the country,” says Tim, who currently serves as president of Ogunquit Museum of American Art.  

He’ll also hold dinners to celebrate show openings at Old York’s George Marshall Gallery, whose curator, Mary Harding, has assisted in Tim’s own art collection, which can’t be described under any certain styles except it’s anything but boring.

“There was no planning. When I go to galleries and see something I like, I don’t think about where it’s going to go, ” says Tim, who re-arranges the walls already full of art every time he finds a new piece.  “I love that idea of just commingling things that don’t match. Plus, for comprehensive art collections you sort of have to do that or they get stowed away.”

He and Mary have collaborated on building the collection for many years. “Mary has a great eye—and she knows my eye,” he notes. His sister, who runs an art gallery in Wiscasset, Maine, also understands his tastes and keeps an eye out for new ideas. “They have this little game,” he says. “Every time they go to an opening, they try to guess what I’d like.”

Tim says he was first inspired to collect by his friendship with artist George Kunkel, and he finds many pieces from regional artists, such as a colorful figure playing a harmonica who has a body made of a xylophone and head from a broom by Michael Stasiuk, a Portsmouth artist who uses found objects in his work.

“The paintings I buy end up friends. They all have their own little story to tell,” he explains. “I’ve gone way beyond buying something and thinking of it as an investment for later.”

That collection leaves the house’s walls to be discovered outside in lush gardens: an angry pig guards a rocky outcropping, ceramic vases sit in raised gardens that roll alongside the front of the house, and majestic cranes and a headless woman reside in the meadow where Tim brought his children to find wildflowers those many years ago.

“I try to include pottery and sculpture in the garden as well,” he says. “It just adds great focal points and curiosity,” says Tim.

With at least four gardens so far and more planned, Tim describes the gardens and intricate walls of stonework interspersed throughout the grounds as “evolving.” A large screened-in porch surveys the backyard, and steps designed by landscape architect Etoile Holzaepfel lead down to the field below. Most recently he added the raised gardens in the front, which were designed in collaboration with garden designer Jenny Wall and bring the garden up close to the dining room’s large front window. “It literally feels like you’re sitting in the garden,” he says. “It comes into that room.”

One of Tim’s favorite spots is next to a small lily pond in the back meadow where a fountain rises from the water. “This is where I come and fall asleep after work,” he says.

Without a doubt, sitting in an Adirondack chair at this quiet spot surrounded by blooming day lilies, listening to the fountain trickle, under the warmth of the summer sun, would make anyone feel content with the world.

“I think the location was what really brought me to it back then” says Tim. “It really affords quiet. It’s just a lovely spot to escape the rigors of summer tourism.”

Majestic cranes by Dan Daniels.
A desk in the the living room faces a wall of art featuring a work by Portland, Maine, artist Noriko Sakanishi in the center, surrounded by works from the following artists (clockwise from lower left): Connie Hayes, Leonard Baskin, Grieg Parker, Larry Hayden, Quint Rose, George Burk, and Fred Lynch.	Steps by landscape designer Etoile Holzaepfel lead to the field behind the house. Surrounding stonework was done by Seacoast Granite of York.
The screened-in porch has plenty of room to relax on a warm summer night.	A gingko lamp and banjo clock, which dates from the early 1800s, provide whimsical touches for the living room.