Photos by Lake Fong, Post-Gazette Betty Ann Miller in front of her home in Edgeworth. Miller remodeled her garage, which sits behind the home on the left, and added a dressing area above the old porch, on the right.

By Kevin Kirkland, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

For the first 60-some years of Betty Ann Miller's life, her 1940s brick Georgian Revival in Edgeworth was fine just the way her parents had built it. Then, four years ago, she decided a family room and first-floor powder room would be nice.

"It just grew from that," she said, laughing.

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	Mrs. Miller, an interior decorator, turned the two-car garage of her Edgeworth house into a family room. Click photo for larger image. Related article Small miracle: Tiny kitchen stylish, efficient after redo

Besides the powder room and family room, she got a four-seasons room, two full bathrooms, all-purpose room, new kitchen and L-shaped patio and formal garden. Then she won a runner's-up award in the Post-Gazette's Renovation Inspiration contest -- and she didn't even enter.

"My daughter, a designer who lives in Austin, sent it in. Isn't she wonderful?" she said when contest judges showed up at her door.

Every room in this house is beautifully decorated with luxurious wallcoverings or faux finishes, small or large oil paintings, and unique items and accents Mrs. Miller has picked in her 48 years as a professional designer. But this wasn't a decorating contest. Mrs. Miller was a winner because her renovation improved her home's space and layout without greatly expanding its footprint.

For instance, a dressing area and master bath were added above an existing side porch. The family room, with its dramatic vaulted ceiling, replaced the old two-car garage, and the all-purpose room, used as a bedroom by her visiting grandchildren, went above the new, two-car garage in back. The rear of the house was slightly expanded and reconfigured to improve traffic flow and better link the new four-seasons room to the patio and garden.

The all-purpose room over the new garage is also used as a bedroom by visiting grandchildren. Click photo for larger image.

"We went from a seven-room house to an 11-room house and it's exactly what I wanted," she said.

Mrs. Miller was her own general contractor, but, of course, she had lots of help. An architectural designer worked out the floorplans and talented craftsmen like blacksmith John Steel, faux painter Paul Means and paper hanger Jack Balkovec played a part. The work took almost two years to complete and Mrs. Miller and her husband, Clarence, lived in another house while it went on.

The decorator, who couldn't resist adding special touches in every room, was delighted when the judges noticed them. Among the favorites: antique wrought- and cast-iron gates and fragments used as stair supports, banisters, trellises and simple decoration on exterior walls; Victorian brass cornices on several windows; and an old Turkish marble sink used outdoors.

At the rear of the house outside the new garage, a patio is shaded by a pergola.

Some of the most interesting details are in the family room. Instead of beams, which Mrs. Miller said created unattractive shadows, she used two oversized turnbuckles and a decorative cable to stylishly support the vaulted ceiling. In a specially highlighted niche over the fireplace is a set of century-old oak carvings of ram's heads that she bought when an 1880s Sewickley mansion was razed.

Two bright red umbrellas left over from a charity ball years ago draw the eyes of visitors to the new all-purpose room over the garage. She uses it as an office and her grandchildren, three boys and a girl, love the bright, airy space with trundle beds and a balcony crafted by Mr. Steel according to Mrs. Miller's designs. She also transformed an antique tin bathtub into a chair by adding a cushion.

In the new master bathroom, the metallic wallpaper is covered with Latin phrases. Her husband's initials are monogrammed in script on the towels.

"He's a minimalist, if you can believe that," his wife says, looking approvingly around their eye-candy-filled bedroom.

They both love the improvements. And she's not finished. The new garden and patio, built by Eichenlaub and designed by Mark McKenzie, incorporated white pine and hemlock trees she remembers helping her father, F.J. Maruca, plant when she was a girl.

But one section of grass visible through an opening in 10-foot-tall hedges looks boring to her designer's eye. She might plant boxwoods there, or something else equally elegant.

"A parterre garden would be nice, something to look at out the window," she said.