Each restored detail takes an Exton home back, but not back to what it once was; back to before it ever was. Thirty years of dedicated time and effort have peeled back the apparent origins of Bernie and Sheila McLaughlin’s 1936 Colonial Revival home to sometime around 1736.

And what started as an initial project that forced them “to stay a couple of years before we could sell,” Sheila said in a Philly.com feature by Sally A. Downey, has become an unbreakable bond that has kept the couple there despite Bernie’s long commute to New Jersey.

It started with historic character, presumably built by architect R. Brognard Okie, “famous for popularizing early American domestic architecture, especially southeastern Pennsylvania’s fieldstone farmhouses,” the article explained. “… It has all of his hallmarks: bead-and-batten cabinets with handwrought iron clasps, wide-plank flooring, a prominent chimney. The house is built far back from the road on high ground beyond a stone-bridged creek. Okie admired ‘the natural way’ colonial farmhouses fit the ground.”

Read much more about the McLaughlins’ restoration on Philly.com here.