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Haven: Saying 'oui' to a French Colonial

Weeks into back-breaking renovations on their French Colonial, Joe Sutton and Brett Smith developed a close relationship with their new home. They even gave it a name. " 'Good night, Monique,' we would say. 'We'll see you in the morning,' " Sutton recalls.

Overhead view of living room ( ALEJANDRO A. ALVAREZ / Staff Photographer )
Overhead view of living room ( ALEJANDRO A. ALVAREZ / Staff Photographer )Read more

Weeks into back-breaking renovations on their French Colonial, Joe Sutton and Brett Smith developed a close relationship with their new home. They even gave it a name. " 'Good night, Monique,' we would say. 'We'll see you in the morning,' " Sutton recalls.

After 30 days, when the lease was up on their rented Rittenhouse Square apartment, Sutton and Smith moved into the home in Ardmore. With crock pot, microwave, and fridge in the basement and a bed in the guest bedroom, they lived in chaos for six months, tearing down several walls and stripping gaudy foil wallpaper from others.

"We saw Monique as an aging French woman with good bones, but badly in need of a makeover," said Sutton, 50.

He and Smith, 52, were up to the challenge, having renovated three previous houses in Chester County.

The two-story French Colonial in Ardmore was built in 1973 over a basement swimming pool. It has three bedrooms, three baths, and about 2,600 square feet. By the time the men bought the house in 2013, the pool leaked badly. They drained it and filled in the hole. "We kept the sauna, though," Smith says.

The men did 60 percent of the work themselves, including tiling in the bathrooms, the foyer, and the gray-and-white backsplash in the kitchen. New windows with diamond-patterned mullions were installed as well as oak flooring downstairs and tweedy carpet on the staircase and upstairs.

They ripped out the galley kitchen, laundry room, and attic to create an open eat-in kitchen with 18-foot-high ceilings to match the height of the living room.

The original dining room became a cozy sitting area. A mahogany round table in the spacious living room expands to seat 15, Smith says. The black marble mantle over the fireplace had been a dining room buffet. A gold-and-black chandelier in the foyer was spray painted white and moved to the kitchen. "We repurposed as much as we could," Sutton says.

Glass-fronted cabinets in the kitchen display LuRay Pastels dinnerware belonging to Smith's grandmother. Her bedroom set furnishes one guest bedroom. The other features a Murphy bed. The first-floor master bedroom has "yacht" blue walls and a sleek, Exhale brand bladeless ceiling fan.

The house is furnished with pieces that Sutton and Smith acquired or created over 30 years together, including a large gold, blue, red, and white abstract painting over a white couch in the living room. The men applied multiple layers of paint to canvas the way pioneers made floor cloths. "It took us months." Sutton says.

They painted living areas gray and painted a white-and-gray diamond design on the powder room walls - no more garish wallpaper.

The Pennsylvania natives, who were married last year, met at Clarion University, about 75 miles north of Pittsburgh.

Smith, a hair stylist in Wayne, and Sutton, an accountant working in King of Prussia, were living in West Chester four years ago.

"We were constantly commuting into the city for social events," Sutton says. "We decided to do an experiment and leased an apartment in Rittenhouse Square. After two years, the commute to the burbs for work became too long. One day we got on the train at 30th Street Station and got off at every station from there to Wayne. We got home that night and looked at each other and said, 'we are moving to Ardmore.' "

The search began for a house that was walkable to the train station. Now, Sutton says, "we constantly take the train and are in town twice a week for social events."

Smith calls Ardmore "urban-suburban." Sutton calls it "a sustainable village with shops, restaurants, and night life."

In addition to their full-time jobs, Smith and Sutton recently formed a design consulting firm, Michael Stuart, combining their middle names.

"We are not trying to be expensive decorators," Sutton says. "We charge an hourly rate, helping people through a painful process, acting as a liaison to contractors and as a source for goods and services."

Recently, the spouses landscaped the front yard and side deck and replaced the old mansard roof cedar shingles with authentic looking vinyl.

Next to the freshly painted black double doors and under the lantern light fixture, a swirl of black letters reads: Monique.

sallydowney@gmail.com