Sheer chance led Tod and Jaylon Von Mertens from one of the oldest houses in Hancock to one of the newest, and from the stream valley along Middle Hancock Road to the very top of Prospect Hill.

“We weren’t even looking to move,” Jaylon said. “We had been in our house for 11 years, and we were happy.” 

Tod, who grew up in Peterborough, graduated from The Well School and ConVal. He and Jaylon met at an art exhibit in Seattle, where they realized they had both recently graduated from NYU as photography majors. 

Jaylon pointed out the fabricated metal horse head hanging over the fireplace.

“Tod made that, and it was on display at the gallery the night we met, and  now it’s kind of our family protector,” Jaylon said. 

Tod, who designs and makes wood and steel furniture for clients around the globe out of  his workshop on Vose Farm Road, has a passion for design, and evidence of his handiwork is everywhere in the home. 

“Tod made all of our furniture except the couches. He redid the kitchen; he made all the railings. We are just really fortunate that thanks to his skill, we get to live in this environment with things wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford,” Jaylon said. 

When Tod and Jaylon moved back to the area from Seattle to be closer to Tod’s family, they bought one of the oldest houses in Hancock, a gray Cape house just up the road from The Well School, which all three Von Mertens children attended. In 2017, a nearby home Jaylon had always loved came on the market, but it turned out to need too much work. 

“When I got online to look at pictures of that house, I saw this one,” Jaylon said. “We weren’t even really looking, but I saw this view and went, ‘Whoa!’ I told Tod, ‘There is a house we have to go look at.’”

The house, which is at the top of Hancock’s Prospect Hill, has a  view over the Contoocook River valley.  

A former home on the property, which people in town say was owned by a boat-builder, burned down years before, leaving an empty lot at the top of the hill.

“We do think it was the home of a boat-builder, because we have found chunks of lead, probably for keel weighting,  in the ground,” Jaylon said. 

The house was designed by a woman who planned for it to be her retirement dream home. The woman died before she was able to move in, and her estate put the unfinished house on the market.

The Von Mertenses wondered why a house with such a view had been sitting on the market, but when they looked at the house, they realized it was unfinished and had some quirky aspects. 

“We think that not a lot of people looked at the house, because although it is a good-sized, it was marketed as only a two-bedroom,” Jaylon said. “Also it only has two garage stalls, and most people want three. We didn’t have a garage at all at our old house, so we were pretty happy to have a two-car garage and not be scraping the car anymore.” 

While the house technically had only two bedrooms with closets, the main floor also had an office, as well as a full-sized loft over the great room. The main floor has 2 1/2 baths, with another full bath in the basement.

The Von Mertenses, who had three children ages 15, 11, and 4 at the time, knew they could make the unusual space work for a family of five, and decided to take on the completion of the house by doing some of the work themselves. 

The walk-out basement, while unfinished, had been plumbed for an apartment or caretaker unit, and had heated floors and a fireplace. Over the course of several years, the Von Mertenses finished the basement, creating a teenage hangout space, another bedroom and bathroom and a laundry room. Tod built the bar, the ping pong table and most of the furniture, as well as the custom metal railings on the basement stairs. 

The Von Mertenses loved the contemporary design of the house, which fit right in with their aesthetic. Tod built and installed new oak kitchen cabinets, and Jaylon scoured the internet to find slightly damaged models of the appliances she wanted.  

In the first year, they added screens to the unfinished porch tucked into a corner of the deck, and Tod replaced the wooden railings with contemporary steel wire. 

The living room has several tables made by friend and fellow contemporary furniture maker Peter Sandback, who works out of a studio in Hancock. The walls contain photography by both Tod and Jaylon, as well as art created or handed down by family members.  

The great room and deck face east and south,  with an unimpeded view over the Wapack range. The steeple of the Hancock Congregational Church can be seen far below in the valley, along with houses on Norway Hill. Nearby, to the west, the peak of Skatutakee seems to rise as high as the house.

“We track the sunrise across the sky; we see the moon rise, and we see a lot of rainbows from up here,” Jaylon said. 

While the house sits on four acres,  it abuts Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests conservation land to the west. To the south, the land drops off sharply. 

In the past eight years, the home has continued to evolve and change with the family. The three Von Mertens children have rotated rooms as they have grown and come and gone from school and college. The former office is now a guest room, and Jaylon has created an art studio in the basement.

“We’re just so grateful we can be here. It’s sunny, it’s warm, the light and the view change all the time,” Jaylon said. “We just love it.”