Breathing new life into home

On the day Jean D'Adamo closed on her fixer-upper in Brigantine, N.J., she decided not to bring her less-than-enthusiastic husband to the walk-through. That was probably for the best.

A real estate agent friend came with her for moral support, and, as if on cue, a bird flew through the fireplace, sailing right past them.

"I was hoping it wasn't an omen," D'Adamo said. The circa-1920s house needed more than a bit of TLC to bring it back to life.

Her husband, Joe, had dreamed of winters in Florida and summers in Brigantine - living in something new. Instead, he spent the next five years renovating the house his wife fell in love with.

The D'Adamos discovered Brigantine in 1975, buying the Sundeck Motel, which they ran in the summer for seven years. Then they decided to turn it into condos.

Joe, who made a living in the construction business in Philadelphia, painstakingly converted each unit himself. Jean sold them.

By 1994, the couple, who had raised a boy and two girls in South Philadelphia, wanted a place to retire where the grandchildren could visit. They loved Brigantine, and Jean saw a listing in her office there, Carrier Sotheby's International Realty, for a 1922 stucco house on an oversize beach-block lot.

"I loved the charm of the house," she said.

Joe agreed: "Every time you would drive by the place, you'd say, 'That is quite a house.' "

But the Spanish-style beauty with the distinctive blue-tile roof was best seen from afar. The fact that it was covered in ivy two feet deep was only the beginning.

"Everyone who saw it thought it needed too much work," Jean said. "I kept crossing my fingers that no one would buy it. I knew Joe could do the work."

She watched and waited for 18 months. Then she sold her husband on the place, even though he had just put in five years with the condo conversion.

The first thing he did was get rid of the ivy that had crept up the windows and half the facade. He settled on a less-than-conventional method of clearing out the thick mess: He took a rope, slipped it behind the vines, and attached it to his SUV.

"When I pulled the car away, I thought the whole front of the house might come off," he said, shrugging.

Other spaces were right out of the movie The Money Pit.

"When you knocked on the plaster walls in the dining room, you could hear crumbling behind them," Jean said, looking at her husband as if she were still apologizing.

He fixed all that and added molding in rooms where there was none. They had someone come in to restore the floors.

The home's previous owners had redone the kitchen, but Jean put her stamp on it, changing the cabinet hardware and countertops, relocating the sink and stove, and replacing the refrigerator.

Off the kitchen, they turned a back entrance into a sitting area, with a gas stove and chairs. Morning light pours in, and Joe can be found there enjoying the newspaper. To make the adjacent dining room, a generous space where the D'Adamo clan gathers on holidays, more cozy, he added another gas fireplace.

During the first winter, Jean and Joe found the house to be less than airtight. A small sunroom at the front had French doors on either side. "The northeast winds went right through them," Jean said. "It was so cold. . . .

"So we blew out the two ends of that room and made it one long one," Joe said.

Now, there are three cozy sitting areas off the large living room. (Jean enjoys the one on the house's south end, where she often curls up with a book.) For the newer sunrooms, they matched the windows facing the street. Elsewhere, they installed new windows for more efficient heating and cooling.

Despite all the changes, the 1920s charm of the house remains, most evident in the living room, where there are curved doorways and a large brick fireplace with a generous mantel and small, cathedral-shaped windows above. Instead of replacing the original chandeliers, Jean found someone to restore them.

Upstairs, they sacrificed one of the four bedrooms to add another full bath. Outside, their son and a crew converted the grass backyard into a paved patio with privacy walls where the extended family gathers for dinners during the high season.

From mid-June to Labor Day, the house is filled with grandchildren, ages 8 to 29. After Labor Day, Brigantine's summer population of 20,000 shrinks to 13,000, and Joe and Jean enjoy the quiet and the chance to settle back into their off-season routine.

Of course, that sometimes means a seasonal home-improvement project. This fall, it will include some outside stucco repair and painting.

Jean loves Brigantine in off-season "because it is not a ghost town like other towns. . . . It's a real community, and all of our neighbors are year-round people."

What does Joe like most? "The parking," he said with a laugh. With three garages, there's always a spot.

"In South Philly, you have to drive around the block at least three times to find a space."

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