Couple, house finally united

Relationships are often all about timing. Meet the right person at the wrong time and things just won't work out. Meet a few years later, when either of you, or circumstances, have changed, and it's another story.

Sometimes, the very same thing can happen with a house. So Quentin and Barbara Giorgio discovered.

Back in the 1970s, when the Giorgios were young marrieds, they visited friends who had just bought a stately stone home in the Drexel Park neighborhood of Upper Darby Township.

It was a classic center-hall Dutch Colonial, built in the early 1900s, with inlaid oak floors, deep windowsills, and unusual arched doorways and windows.

The Giorgios fell instantly in love with that house. So enamored were they, they decided to look in the neighborhood for a similar place. They ended up settling, however, for "a significantly less exciting house" three blocks away, says Barbara Giorgio. Then, a few years later, their friends decided to move.

"They knew we had always loved the house, so they came to us first when they were going to sell," says Barbara. But she and Quentin had just finished a big renovation. They had a new baby, and had recently bought a building nearby where Quentin, a physician, had set up his medical practice.

"We had to pass on it, and another set of friends bought it," says Barbara, a former teacher who now works in staff development with the Garnet Valley School District.

A few more years later, those friends decided to sell and, again, the Giorgios got first dibs.

"Finally, the time was right," says Barbara.

The Giorgios moved into the three-story house 12 years ago, and since then they have been making the place their own. They installed central air-conditioning and built a walk-in closet in the master bedroom. They added a retractable canvas awning to a second-floor terrace - a favorite spot for Barbara, who can be found there most summer days with a book.

After a flood in 2004 damaged the walk-out basement, they did a major remodel, turning the space into a well-appointed hangout for their son, now a high school senior, complete with knotty pine paneled walls, comfortable furniture, a game table, and a large-screen TV. There's also a pull-out bed for overnight guests and a full bath.

In the kitchen, the couple did a cosmetic makeover that retained the custom cherrywood cabinetry and imported Italian tile installed by previous owners in a major renovation. ("We remember when we first saw the kitchen in the '70s," says Barbara. "It was chopped up into three little rooms and had daisy wallpaper.") The Giorgios added a new center island and brown-and-cream granite countertops to replace white Corian that had cracked.

"The big dilemma," says Quentin, "was what to do about the blank space that was left when we removed the Corian backsplash."

Then they discovered a box of the same Italian tile used on the kitchen walls that had been stowed away in the basement. "Amazingly," he says, "we had the exact number the tile-setter needed to create a new backsplash."

Most recently, in a four-month project completed just before the holidays, the couple engaged local decorator Larry Martin to give the house a new look with paint and wallpaper. Now, the spacious dining room has a sumptuous Victorian style that features seven different patterns of Bradbury & Bradbury wallpaper - not only on the walls, but inlaid in an elaborate pattern on the ceiling. Window trim is painted burgundy. Window frames are orange. Doors and wainscoting are several shades of green with gold highlights picking up details in the woodwork. "At first," says Quentin, "I said to Barbara, 'Burgundy and orange? Are you sure this guy knows what he's doing?' But we could not be happier with how it turned out."

The midnight-blue ceiling in the foyer, echoed on the hallway ceiling upstairs, was Martin's idea, too. That color also turns up on the ceiling in the first-floor powder room, where the walls got a Venetian plaster effect. In the living room, he painted the ceiling sky-blue, and created a striated effect with paint on the pale walls.

The Giorgios' home-improvement impulses have extended to the outdoors.

When the same flood that prompted that basement remodel turned their side yard into a muddy expanse, they decided it was time to rethink the space with the help of landscape designers from Waterloo Gardens.

Out went the patchy lawn and the no-longer-used play set. In came no-maintenance stone pavers to create a large patio for dining and lounging. Planting areas were delineated, and a handsome wooden fence installed to create privacy. Quentin, who closed his practice to go into clinical research and now works for a firm that assists hospitals involved in disputes with insurance companies, also got something he had always dreamed of: a small pond with a waterfall, stocked with fat, colorful koi.

It was all perfect - until a severe storm hit Delaware County and took down the massive tree that had provided shade to the otherwise sun-baked space. Finding a way to create some shade, says Barbara, is the couple's next big house project. Just another labor of love for the house that almost got away.

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