A Montgomery County Colonial where a family of four can ‘really put down roots’

Bright light pouring into the circa-1920 house’s millwork windows, even during a snowstorm, sealed the deal for Naomi and Grant Barton. The stone center-hall Colonial home in Merion Station was the perfect spot for the couple and daughters Nora, 4, and Phoebe, 2, who moved from West Philadelphia in November.

“I remember coming through the front door and even though the wallpaper was dark, it still felt really bright in the reflection of the snow,” said Naomi, 36, a nurse practitioner and the living donor coordinator in the kidney transplant program at Lankenau Hospital in Wynnewood. “It felt warm and cozy.”

The neighborhood was also a draw, offering an easy commute to both Naomi and Grant’s jobs, close proximity to schools, and the ability to walk to shops in nearby Narberth Borough. “It’s a quaint strip with American flags lining the main street, with shops, restaurants and a little library and park,” she said.

The home did need some work, mostly to suit the Bartons’ style. “It had great bones and a lot of soul,” she said. The previous owner, whom they met, had been in the home for 40 years. While he had more traditional decorating taste, the Bartons believed that he had taken great care of the house.

“He raised his family here, and I think he felt good about bestowing it to us, the next generation to raise a family there,” said Naomi, who appreciates that the home has had only a few occupants in its 100 years. “It felt like a place to really put down roots.”

To make the home less formal with a more casual vibe, they did some modernizing. Functional improvements included installing central air conditioning, moving the laundry room upstairs, and updating some electrical work. Aesthetically, they replaced wallpaper with pastel paint, removed dark rugs, and refinished the existing wood floors.

They gutted the kitchen, saving some of the appliances. Removing an existing wall into the dining room and a half wall into a seating area enlarged the space.

“We wanted to finish it with millwork that matched the rest of the house so it didn’t look out of place or be too open,” Naomi said.

Bronwyn Reice of Buckminster Green designed the large island with a reclaimed pine countertop. A built-in speed oven functions as a second conventional oven and microwave. Instead of cabinets, drawers fill the area below the counter, and windows fill the space where upper cabinets once were. The new windows in the black-and-white kitchen match the style of the original windows while filling the room with bright light.

“I was a bit nervous about not having upper cabinets because that’s what I was used to,” Naomi said. “But the drawers work great for storing bowls and plates. Everything except cups, which I store in our hutch.”

The kitchen is where the family eats dinner on most nights, unless they have company. Then, they move into the adjacent dining room. They enjoy spending time in the living room, with a stone wood-burning fireplace at its center.

“It’s really nice to have a real fire in the fireplace, something we couldn’t do in our old house,” said Grant, 35, a hospitalist at the VA Hospital in Philly. “This floor of the house is very cozy and has been one of the nice surprises.”

Four of the 3,000-square-foot home’s five bedrooms are on the second floor. The couple stole a couple of feet from the room they use as an office to create his and her closets in the master bedroom. They also gutted the en suite bathroom, installing a double vanity, a white subway tiled walk-in shower, and a black-and-white basket weave tile floor.

The third floor includes a guest bedroom and bathroom for friends and family who often visit. “The kids like to tell stories about our relatives, even the ones who don’t live nearby,” Naomi said. Most family members are present in the family photos that line the walls surrounding each staircase. Nora and Phoebe’s favorite shows their grandfather with a bird on his head.

The children enjoy playing in their bedrooms, but their favorite game is hide-and-seek in the house’s nooks and crannies, most notably the crawl space under the stairs.

“It makes me feel like they will grow up with all these memories of their house," Naomi said, “and that’s a really good feeling.”

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