Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 1, 1995                   TAG: 9503010035
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

NEXT, HE'LL BE TUNING IN BOB VILA

These pieces also make me anxious, and I can tell my wallet gets nervous, too.

There's usually a friendly architect in these stories - a splendid fellow who can really spend money.

One day you're living in this hovel - some cretin put the front door in the MIDDLE of the house, for Frank Lloyd Wright's sake - and the next thing you know you're living in something that looks like Twelve Oaks.

Often, these stories contain dedicated spouses who know what they want and go right after it. Their combined income appears to be in the mid-six-figure range.

These people cheerfully allow people to pull out perfectly good windows in order to make bigger ones so that the lighting inside is better or something like that. They also put down brick and stone walks that cost about $15,000.

These stories go something like this:

"When Trescott and Madelaine Schoonbreaker inherited her parents' 1950s home they agreed that it had little charm."

(The ``before" shot of this house - Madelaine's old man ruined his health paying for it - resembles some of the ruins in the French countryside after the Battle of the Somme in World War I.)

"The Schoonbreakers contacted George Cleanlines, an architect and old family friend, who told them the house could become a bright and lively treasure in just a short time."

Soon after George has torn out all of the original windows and floors, and added a porch that looks like the Arc de Triomphe over the relocated front door, the Schoonbreakers are pictured hugging each other in the Roman gallery that Cleanlines put in where the side porch used to be.

The picture doesn't show a bank officer in the front yard putting up a foreclosure sale sign.

The sign is near the 18th-century English maze that George put in at a price that allowed the principal partners in Landscapes-R-Us to retire at 40.

Most people who look at the house don't buy because they're afraid their kids will get lost in the maze.

I know I don't know anything about architecture or other qualities that enhance life in this country. I know I'm a Moon Pie-Pepsi type who can't discuss the arts or music with any authority.

But I've got enough sense to know that a front door belongs in the middle of a house.