WHEN IT CAME TIME for Susan Leaderman and her husband, Robert, to renovate their 155-year-old two-bedroom farmhouse on New York's Long Island, the couple had a clear goal in mind: to update the space without taking away the charm they'd fallen in love with. They also hoped to home into a place that wouldn't require so much upkeep. In short, "we were really tired of looking at peeling paint," says Susan. Before breaking ground on the project — which would replace the porch, enlarge the second floor, and add a mudroom and a three-car garage — Susan carefully researched materials and discovered a wealth of options. To create, as Susan calls it, "a low-maintenance house for a high-maintenance girl," the couple chose man-made materials, such as lightweight engineered stone in place of natural stone and durable fiber-cement siding from James Hardie as an alternative to cedar.

Working closely with Tom Schietinger, principal of Improvements by Design, a James Hardie Preferred Remodeler, the pair picked three different styles of siding to give the new parts of the home the same farmhouse charm as the original. The blend of old and new is just what the couple imagined — now it's hard to tell which parts of the house were recent additions and which architectural elements are true antiques.