Features: The Ultimate Philadelphia Dream House: I Love It, It’s Perfect, Now Change It
“What about that place?” said John, pointing to a white stucco house one day later that week, as we sped along with the Buffers, as John called our realtors. We got home and looked up the house online: It was a classic stone and stucco farmhouse and had been built in the 1930s, my favorite architectural period, but it was way too expensive for us. Plus, the pictures weren’t so good: One photo showed the blank white front of the house, with its missing shutters and rather cold-looking empty front porch; another, weirdly, showcased the long, narrow upstairs hall. Only the shots of the back of the house looked great, with towering old oaks and maples, and a covered slate back terrace.
Note to Century 21: Get a new photographer! Because that Sunday, we went inside the house with the Buffers, and saw carved Georgian fireplaces; vintage marble windowsills; three sets of original French doors out to the covered porch; an old brick patio on one side of the house; the sunny family room, which was a modern addition. About three weeks later, thanks to a lowball offer and a very quick settlement, we owned it.
This time, decorating my dream house was going to require more than leafing through my ridiculous laminated notebook. First of all, it wasn’t my dream house. It was our dream house, for John, me, and two small boys. John is truly into modern — think boutique hotel — and I wanted him to feel immediately, happily at home there. And both of us wanted it to be the boys’ rock-’n’-roll, cozy, homey refuge (while looking cool and antiquey at the same time). It had to have a place for our Beatles-loving younger son to rock out with his tiny electric guitars, and for John to rock out on his drums. It had to accommodate Tyler, who can spend 14 hours a day outside looking for frogs, “mining” for mica, riding his scooter, playing tennis, fishing, or doing pretty much anything that involves mud. I rotated my fantasies of cocktail parties down on the list.
The family room and the kids’ rooms needed to be done first, clearly, to ease Tyler and Dylan through all the emotional and physical transitions, so we started setting them up the week before we moved in. We used colorful, funky carpets and all the boys’ familiar furniture in their sunny rooms, and framed their groovy artwork from school, and with a half-dozen night-lights, we even got them used to the long, spooky hallway to their yellow-and-black-tiled bathroom. We loaded up another room with drums and guitars, and hung colorful fabric prints from Urban Outfitters on the walls, and got funky ’60s-green pillows for the old sofas (cleaned by now of the throw-up). For the family room, we ordered puffy love seats from Restoration Hardware in … chocolate brown.
