Not a scrap of gingham

In December 2003, the family moved to Los Angeles.

"Here I really feel carefree," Choy says. "You can be yourself. There's no one to judge. I have a lot of arguments with my friends. They think I'm crazy to feel this way. But that's how I feel."

After two years of fruitless house-hunting in Brentwood and Westwood, the couple changed tactics and bought a 12,000-square-foot lot adjacent to Wong's parents' house in Studio City.

They quickly developed the general footprint of their future house: an L-shape wrapped around a rectangular swimming pool, with living spaces on the first floor and bedrooms on the second.

"We could either make it a flat-roof modern box, which would have been beautiful as well, or try to blend with the neighborhood," says Choy, who put her career on hold to oversee construction. "We chose the latter."

Look up and down the street, and one sees an amalgam of traditions: Spanish-style stuccoes, white picket fences, faux shutters with an Old West look. Choy and Wong focused on the roof lines and saw nothing but gables.

"So, naturally, a barn," Choy says of their conclusion. "A modern barn would be the right thing. It will fit in."

In her book "The Farmhouse: New Inspiration for the Classic American Home," Minneapolis architect Jean Rehkamp Larson notes that the defining aesthetic elements of this type of house echo contemporary design: crisp lines, a formal sense of order and symmetry, restraint in decoration. Farmhouses reflect a way of living that is elegant in its simplicity, sophisticated yet functional, she says.

"There's a simplicity of construction that's true to its function and form," Wong adds. "On the other side of the coin, there's a figurative quality too."

But the neighbors? They weren't so convinced. "My husband is a diplomat," Choy says. "He took them on and explained, 'We're not done yet. We haven't finished construction. We haven't even started landscaping. So reserve your judgment."

Vindication didn't come till last fall, when construction was completed and Halloween trick-or-treating gave neighbors another reason to stop by. "At least 100 people must have come through," Choy says, "and all of a sudden they are like best friends."

INSIDE, visitors find plenty of clever surprises, many related to the push-pull between the refined and the rustic, the formal and the casual.