ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Friday, September 20, 1996             TAG: 9609200088
SECTION: FALL HOME & LANDSCAPE    PAGE: 3    EDITION: METRO 

DOORS TRANSFORM HOUSE INTO A HOME

When Tom and Mary Stuart Link and their four children moved into their new 25-room home on Carolina Avenue, they had to renovate almost everything.

The home was built to be used as a residence, but for most of its life, it has served as a private school, as a speech and hearing center, and finally, as a doctor's office. As a result, it had no kitchen, but it did have a cloak room in the basement and two sound-proof rooms where the back porch used to be.

The double front doors, which are angled into a corner of the house and surrounded by graceful columns, looked outdated and institutional, said Mary Stuart Link. And because it had been a public building, for safety reasons, they opened outward.

"They didn't work on the house as all," she said.

Replacing them was as easy as going to Lowe's and picking out two oak doors with leaded-glass insets. The effect is "pleasing and pretty," Link said. "It looks like a home."

The only problem, she laughed, is "the doors still swing out."

LENGTH: Short :   31 lines
ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO:   ROGER HART STAFF  Tom and Mary Stuart Link replaced the
          outdated institutional- look doors on their 25-room Roanoke home 
          with a pair of modern oak doors. color