William Tenney House, Frost Hill Road, Marlborough, New Hampshire

I did a little selective editing to the house portrait above. As cute as a button as that little house is, the whole picture includes a breezeway that connects it to a timber-framed, barn-inspired addition. 

It instantly reminded me of the inn and barn from the movie White Christmas.

They even have similar windows....

Instead of being near the ski slopes in fictional Pine Tree, Vermont, though, the Tenney house is near Mount Monadnock in New Hampshire.

Like White Christmas, Tenney House is also similar to the movie Holiday Inn, in that a simple farmhouse got a heaping helping of expansion in the name of hospitality.

Let's start in the 1795 portion. Fittingly for a Christmas movie house, the red front door opens to a view of the piano.

That bright living room is in front of the cozy family room:

If it were mine, I'd bring in plenty of old-fashioned Christmas charm, like this:

{source}

My scheme is little more like The Holiday than White Christmas, but it's still somewhere I'd love to be.

There's also a front bedroom and a back office in the original part of the house:

The breezeway space connects to the old family room. It's a wide-open kitchen/dining/great room space that has the new main entry.

Again, this space evokes old Christmas movie charm. Something like this, maybe:

{The Holly and the Ivy}

There are three bedrooms and one bathroom upstairs in this breezeway addition. 

There's also a bathroom and bedroom over the 1795 portion of the house, although the space is not officially designated as a bedroom.

The barn-inspired addition on the other side of the breezeway has yet another bedroom and bathroom tucked behind the garage.

That's not all of the bedrooms, however. There's also one in the basement under the garage:

Thank goodness the photographer had detailed floorplans on his site, or I'd never have figured out this meandering layout. There are officially six bedrooms and four bathrooms in 4,855 square feet.

Last up is the loft over the garage.

It's the perfect space to watch for Santa flying over the mountain on his way back to the North Pole.

In all my years of researching houses, this is the first time I learned the provenance from a placemat.

The Marlborough Historical Society showcases their inventory on collectible placemats. Luckily for us, the Tenney house leaps off the page...or placemat.

{source}

William Tenney was an early Marlborough resident and saw mill owner. The Tenney house held the Marlborough Social Library until 1843. Membership shares in it were sold for $2.00, with additional fees imposed when the library needed to buy more books. When interest in doing this waned, the town eventually created the Frost Free Library. {source}

Since it still has that library-cozy vibe, this is definitely a house where you want to curl up and watch old Christmas movies. And if you want to play up that feel with a little movie tribute on the barn, that's more than fine with me.

The listing is here.