THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, March 27, 1995 TAG: 9503270033
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MATTHEW BOWERS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Medium: 72 lines
A dream has to start somewhere. And in this field of dreams known as The Mid-Atlantic Home & Garden Show, which wrapped up a three-day run Sunday at the Pavilion, it can range from a luxurious whirlpool spa for your patio to, well - over there, where the Armentrouts are standing.
In front of closet shelves.
``It's a huge need for us,'' Shelley Armentrout says.
She and husband Stacey, unlike the masses of shoulder-borne children crowding one end of the massive hall, didn't drive from Chesapeake for the ``Thomas the Tank Engine'' musical shows.
``We're just basically looking for ideas to make our home look better,'' Stacey says.
``We left our kid at home so we wouldn't have to be over there at `Thomas the Tank Engine,' '' adds Shelley.
That freed them to wander with hundreds of others among the 200 or so exhibits and dream about ways to update their 40-year-old rancher in Deep Creek. It's their first home, and a show like this one - with everything from gutterless gutters to remote-control mini-blinds to stereo speakers hidden inside rocks - can inspire but also intimidate.
``It just lets you realize how bad your home is,'' Stacey says, shaking his head.
``Plus you look at satellites and spas and things,'' Shelley says, a little wistfully.
Don't get them wrong. They and their 5-year-old son have been in their house four years, and they like it. But they're homeowners, which means they'll always see things that need, as Stacey says, ``updating.''
``It's, like, a light-switch-outside-the-room house,'' Shelley says. ``A doors-open-the-wrong-way house.
``We're still fixing holes in the wall. In fact, we should be home working on it.''
For Lawrence and Carol Harris of Chesapeake, the dream is going up in Zuni - two stories and 3,900 square feet of it. They'd already hit home-and-garden shows in Richmond and Hampton before the Mid-Atlantic one, using them to comparison-shop for prices and ideas for their new house.
``No one has a perfect home,'' Lawrence says. ``That's why folks are out here.''
Dreams and dreamy sights were around every corner. A boy transfixed by a wall-sized home-theater system. Glass-topped dolphin tables with fins popping through their tops.
Kids in the child-care room wearing plastic construction helmets and swinging plastic hammers. A man in colonial garb selling mortgages.
No wonder no one seems to notice a woman hurrying through the crowd carrying a green snow shovel.
But it's hard not to notice the toot-toot-tooting over at the Thomas show, featuring the blue steam-engine star of the Public Broadcasting Service's wildly popular ``Shining Time Station'' children's show. For the hundreds of children here - who somehow escaped being mesmerized by kitchen sinks - Thomas is the dream.
Dream enough to drive 2 1/2 hours up from Buxton, N.C., for. Just ask the Morgan family.
No way they would have driven all this way just to look at toilets and cabinets, says Tim Morgan. Nope, for 2 1/2-year-old Bryce Morgan, Thomas was the draw and the dream.
``Big Thomas fan,'' says Tim, poking his son in the shoulder. ILLUSTRATION: CHRISTOPHER REDDICK
Staff
Linda Frederick,left, and Judie Robertson, both of Virginia Beach,
look over remote-control blinds at the Mid-Atlantic Home & Garden
Show. The show, at the Pavilion, featured about 200 exhibits. by CNB