Unable to resist fixer-upper

Alan and Marla Beletz of Plymouth Meeting acknowledge that they mislaid their sanity - temporarily - eight years ago.

Picture this: You've lived in your current home, a center-hall Colonial in Whitemarsh, for nine years. It's the third house you've had in nearly two decades of marriage.

You've remodeled it to your taste. You've just finished installing a new kitchen - granite countertops, the works.

"We said, 'This is it, we're done,' " says Marla Beletz, 46, who looks perfectly normal.

Then her husband, who is 47 and also perfectly normal-looking, heard about a house in the neighborhood - a majestic but trashed house in need of an owner.

The house, built in 1739, was so littered with garbage and dirt, you couldn't walk through it. It had holes in the floors, holes in the windows. The previous owners had been out of the house a year, the Beletzes said. The year was 2001.

"I drove by and said, 'This is really cool,' " Alan Beletz recalls.

He took his wife to see it, and all thoughts of staying in their center-hall Colonial fled. Marla Beletz remembers a friend saying: " 'Oh my God, you're moving there? You're nuts.' "

They bought the trashed house and sold their restored center-hall Colonial in a week's time. The new owners wanted them out in four months.

Fortunately, the Beletzes had a couple of things in their favor: The two houses were only a mile apart, so working nights and weekends was not a problem. And Alan Beletz, whose family business is Beletz Bros. Glass Co. in Philadelphia, knows his way around a construction site.

Considering the age of their new house, and its location in a designated historic district, the couple met with the local historical commission. But they pretty much were given free rein - " 'as long as you don't paint the windows purple,' " Alan Beletz recalls being told.

They didn't. Wherever they could, the Beletzes preserved the home's dignity and historical aspects.

A perfect example: the tread leading from a hallway to the kitchen. It's the original wood, and the midsection is well worn down. But Alan Beletz wouldn't let the contractor fix it.

Nor would he make original doorways any bigger.

In the first-floor hall leading to the kitchen, two doors are side by side. One is short and leads to a laundry closet. Underneath the floor is the original marble cistern, or water well. It's covered; Alan Beletz plans to use it eventually as a wine cellar. The other door, created during the construction, leads to a bathroom.

"We salvaged everything we possibly could," Alan Beletz said.

The home was built in three phases, in 1739, 1780, and 1820, and the Beletzes are its sixth owners. The Georgian-style structure has seven fireplaces, two bread ovens, and much original pine flooring (no rugs cover them). The stone walls are more than a foot thick.

The couple, who share the house with their two teenage sons, say they pored over "hundreds on magazines," looking for ideas that would allow them to modernize, but at the same time maintain the dwelling's heritage.

That's evident in the kitchen. The original fireplace, nearly 5 feet tall, commands one wall. A white porcelain stove has a 1930s feel to it. The deep white sink and the faucet, with its slender gooseneck, are replicas of those used in the 1780s, the Beletzes say.

Combined, the effect is spacious, simple, warm.

Despite Alan Beletz's professional background, getting the house into move-in condition was not easy. First, the couple had to come up with a plan; acting as architects/builders, they designed what they wanted.

Because this was their fourth house, they knew what they needed: closet space; room for the boys; extensive upgrades to the plumbing system. They even installed central air conditioning, despite a hot-water-radiator heating system.

The only argument the couple had was over the family room: Marla Beletz wanted it, her husband did not. She won.

One huge headache was the electrical system, which was shot, Alan Beletz said.

"We bought [the house] as is and prayed it wasn't falling down. With our budget in mind, if I had known it needed all new electric and plumbing, I don't know if I would have bought it."

If he has doubts now, they are not obvious. What is obvious is that Alan Beletz loves his house - loves showing it, loves talking about it.

He has framed what could be the original deed from the original owner, Nathan Cook.

Beletz, who says he was never a history buff, points out an original boot scraper near the front door, as well as the post indicating its historic significance at the end of the front walkway.

A photo album serves as a visual record of what the house looked like when the Beletzes bought it, and what it looked like under construction. In the backyard stands the house's original gas light, which he had wired for electricity.

Also never replaced is the piece of glass in which Helen Livezey, who lived in the house in the 1800s, etched the date of her engagement.

Alan Beletz does not even want to replace the old windows, preferring to put weatherstripping around them.

He is intent on keeping intact all the history he can.

Tell us about your haven by e-mail (and send some digital photographs) at properties@phillynews.com.

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