Haven: Taking a Revolutionary turn

Typically, those who acquire ancestral homes modernize them. Keith and Janet Childs did the reverse, aging his grandparents' mid-20th-century split-level back about 200 years.

Except for an attached garage, the Blue Bell house now resembles the historic mansions of Germantown, such as Cliveden, site of a Revolutionary War battle. Gen. Washington lost that fight, but he won the war and the hearts of his countrymen - including Keith Childs.

"George Washington is in every room in this house," Janet Childs says.

Images of Washington include a copy of Charles Willson Peale's portrait, a depiction of him presiding over the Constitutional Convention, a painting in the family room of Washington on horseback, and, behind the canopied bed in the master bedroom, one of him kneeling in prayer.

To enhance the Revolutionary War-era decor, the couple chose Williamsburg paints: white for walls, with soft gray or sage green trim in living areas, and rustic red for the kitchen. (A built-in spice rack was crafted by one of Keith's friends.)

Janet applied blue milk paint to a TV cabinet Keith made to resemble a Colonial cupboard. He also built a Colonial-style liquor cage, a storage cupboard for spirits with a pull-down grate that can be locked, and he carved the small stone sink next to it.

Keith, 52, a stone mason with his own business, bought the three-bedroom house from his mother, Charlotte, in 1991. She had inherited it from her parents, Max and Hilda Mordhorst, who had the stone home built in a new subdivision in 1955.

"I spent a lot of time here as a kid," he says.

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Haven: Taking a Revolutionary turn