An artist's eighteenth-century house in Virginia

For the artist Anne Massie, the day she set eyes on her late-eighteenth-century house in Virginia was 'prophetic'. It is no wonder she uses such an emotive adjective when she tells the story: 'My brother Will and I were visiting our parents in our hometown of Lynchburg, Virginia, after having bought a property together in Richmond, a two-hour drive east. We were in our early twenties and had neither the money nor the time for another property.' However, when Anne and Will heard that a historic house in nearby Locust Grove was for sale, they could not resist driving by to see it. 'Needless to say, we fell in love with it there and then.'

She and Will decided they had to buy the house, although she says it was 'crazy' given they were both so young. Built perhaps as early as 1758, with later additions, it was used as a hunting lodge in the early twentieth century. By the time Anne and Will had bought it in 1988, it was empty and in need of an update, but the condition was fundamentally sound.

The house has changed shape over the years. 'It had a side hall originally and was essentially a two up, two down,' Anne says. 'In the 1830s, it seems that two more rooms were added on both floors, making the hall central.' The drawing room was altered in the Thirties into the shape of an octagon, by walling off the four corners of the room. These corners now house hidden storage cabinets, accessible from the hall, and two recessed radiators.

For the first six years or so, Will and Anne visited every weekend they could and, together with their parents, set about renovating both the house and the garden. In 1994, after Will had married his wife, Alice, and had their daughter, Ella, he bought Anne out of her share. 'Will and Alice updated all the plumbing and electrics, added a bigger back porch and put the pool in,' says Anne, who moved back to the house 12 years ago. 'What is now my painting studio was their pool house.'

The house was not the only project Anne and Will undertook together. In 1991, they embarked on an even bigger endeavour by founding the garden furniture company McKinnon and Harris (named after their two grandmothers, both ardent gardeners). Over the past 25 years, their workshop in Richmond has handcrafted garden furniture in powder-coated aluminium. Will and Anne design every collection together, often testing new ranges in the garden of the house. Anne describes the garden as 'a laboratory for living outdoors; we obsess over every detail and here you can really see what works best'.

In 2004, the house changed hands again. Will and his family were so firmly established in Richmond that the four-hour round trip to Locust Grove was becoming more and more infrequent, so Anne decided to buy the house back from her brother. After marrying Alex Winstead in 2009, she added the front portico and a new two-storey extension on the left of the house, and they set about renovating the grounds, planting 20 heirloom apple trees and 55 native trees in one season alone, including the cedars that now line the drive.

Anne also transformed the look of the interior. She has a natural sense of colour - as can be seen in the pictures she paints. From the hall - the oldest part of the house - you turn left into the calm oasis of the octagonal drawing room. It is decorated with Anne's collection of creamware plates, found objects and two huge panels that she painted herself. Behind this is the dining room, with its 1830s Federal chimneypiece and heart-pine panelling, which was almost certainly cut down from the woodland that surrounded the house. The furniture in here includes fine pieces passed down through maternal and paternal lines, such as the early-nineteenth-century walnut corner cabinet. On the wall are magnificent landscape paintings of Italy, Greece and Virginia by Anne's late mother, Anne Adams Robertson Massie, as well as more works by Anne herself.