A garage's condition divulges a lot about those who live in the house that goes with it.

A garage with no dust on the floor; where pairs of garden shoes are perfectly lined up on a shelf; where each tool has a well-thought-out place - that kind of garage belongs to people whose sense of order and decorum is encoded in their DNA.

Folks like Charlie and Janet Scott of Broomall.

"Pardon the mess in the garage," Charlie Scott tells a visitor, who takes off her shoes before entering the house. Not respecting their obvious desire for cleanliness is out of the question.

Once one passes through the garage door and into the 60-year-old split-level, it's clear that this house has been lovingly tended since 1971, the year the Scotts bought it. By that point, they had been married 11 years, living in Glenolden. The first of their two children had already arrived.

The story behind their purchase of the house is interesting, says Charlie Scott, 77, who soon reveals his talent for dry wit and understatement. Janet Scott, 73, a retired executive administrator, begins the tale.

"We wanted a single home," she says. "At the time, houses were scarce. . . . The Realtor said he only had a few houses." They liked Broomall, she says, because of the school district (Marple Newtown).

When they pulled up to the house, Charlie Scott says, there already was another car parked there; the couple inside also wanted to look at the house. But the Scotts had the first appointment.

They went into the backyard, where a very large German shepherd was tied to a tree. The homeowner assured the Scotts that the dog was no danger, but as the couple walked by the tree, the dog lunged, biting Charlie Scott on the shoulder.

"The dog drew blood," he says.

The homeowner didn't show the house to anybody else until the Scotts returned from the hospital. "She was afraid we'd sue," Charlie Scott says.

They bought the house that day, and over the years, they made it their own. Charlie Scott, who worked for the old Bell Telephone Co. (later AT&T) as an assistant staff manager, did all the work himself.

"There's not much I can't do," Charlie Scott says. About the only thing that's made him nervous was hanging the flat-screen TV in the family room, he says - he needed help with that.

The couple, who met in a bar in the late 1950s, converted the original garage into a family room. Inlays of stone, in diamond shapes, are embedded in the plastered walls - Charlie Scott also made a living as a plasterer, before and after working at Bell.

In the galley kitchen, he lowered the ceiling to incorporate recessed lighting and bumped out the back wall to the roof's overhang. He put in a sliding-glass door, allowing more space in the kitchen and access to the backyard. He tucked a tiny broom closet inside the two-foot wall that encloses the refrigerator.

"Charles always had a project going on," says Janet Scott - even if it wasn't in his own home.

A friend asked Charlie Scott to put in a doorway for her, so he did. A few months later, the friend wanted things restored to the way they were. "I told her next time I'd put it on a zipper," he says.

The living room best reflects the qualities and nature of this devoted couple.

When they lived in Glenolden, Janet Scott says, they decided it would be practical to buy handmade furniture, because it would last. She wanted French Provincial with fruitwood, so they ordered a sofa and three chairs from a local furniture store.

The fabric looks like raw silk. The sofa and one of the chairs are sky blue; the two other chairs are gold. None reflects its age: no apparent rips, stains, pulls, or indents.

The Scotts pulled out the receipts from 1961: The sofa and chair cost $425, plus tax; the two gold chairs, $232.96. And they've never been recovered.

"Everything in here is 50 years old, except us," Charlie Scott says.

Off to the sides of the room are three curios: one for their Belleek; another for their Waterford; the third for their Royal Doulton. (Both Scotts are first-generation Irish; their mothers hailed from County Mayo.)

Yes, their children were allowed in the living room. "They never bothered with anything," Janet Scott says.

No, they never get tired of looking at their living room. "We can't imagine never being around it," Charlie Scott says.