Can someone excel in both gardening and home renovation? Kathy and Greg Short can.

Three years ago, the couple and their toad-friendly garden were runners-up in the Post-Gazette's Great Garden Contest. Now, they are runners-up in the PG's Renovation Inspiration Contest for their 30-years-and-counting renovation of a Squirrel Hill house.

When they bought the 1895 brick-and-shingle Victorian in 1978, it was one of the worst houses on this section of Murray Hill Avenue -- overgrown, remuddled and broken into apartments. Today, it's among the grandest places on one of the neighborhood's oldest streets.

The Shorts were unlikely old-house pioneers. Neither knew much about restoration, but they were good with their hands and willing to get them dirty.

"We'd never done anything," Mrs. Short, 58, said. "We learned plumbing, how to put in windows -- everything."

They began by removing kitchens, bathrooms and walls that separated three apartments. Out front, they had architect and friend Peter Brown of Squirrel Hill design a new porch to replace the one torn off by a previous owner. Then the couple designed and installed landscaping and a large water garden in the sloping back yard. Inside, they gutted walls, laid tile, patched plaster, stripped, rebuilt and refinished woodwork and painted.

Because they did so much of the work themselves, they say they probably spent less than $50,000 -- the maximum for the contest's small project category. The contest, which is sponsored by the PG and the Community Design Center of Pittsburgh, also specifies that the work must have been done within the past four years. Although the couple has renovated the whole house, only the front hall, living room and kitchen were finished in that time period.

No matter; there was more than enough inspired work to make the Shorts winners. So much of it looks professional, it's hard to believe it was done by two amateurs -- he's a retired teacher, and she is a social worker for the Pittsburgh School District.

Look first at the ornate front staircase. Mr. Short spent more than 100 nights stripping the red oak balustrade, stairs and paneling. He also created new tops for the newel posts (the old ones had been torn off) and re-created molding around the doorways and windows.

Now look at the windows. The two on the staircase held nothing but single panes of clear glass when the Shorts bought the house. Twenty years ago, when the youngest of their four children was a baby, Mrs. Short took a basic stained-glass class and made a window. But she was never happy with it.

Several years ago, she signed up for advanced stained-glass classes at Glass Dragon Studio of Homestead. Her first project was a transom for the window over the kitchen door. Next, she tackled the lower staircase window depicting pink and red waterlilies. It took her two years, she said, with many do-overs and lots of advice from her instructor, Jim Forrester. The upper window, depicting koi and a purple waterlily, went much faster -- nine months.

Mrs. Short also laid the tile around the new gas fireplace in the living room and in the kitchen floor.

"On the day before my daughter's engagement party, I finished the kitchen floor," she said, rolling her eyes.

Her husband, who gleefully demonstrated the gas fireplace's remote control, "was the guy in the basement with the tile saw," she said. He also installed greenhouse windows in the living room and kitchen to give her a little more space for her 200 orchids, which overwinter throughout the house.

On every project, Mr. Short is his own contractor and laborer. He reopened doorways closed to make apartments and removed several large closets, including one attached to the chimney in the living room. A friend gave him the ornate columned fireplace mantel that looks like it always has been there. He also installed wood trim that highlights the coved, 11 1/2-foot ceilings and new oak floors in the front hall, living room and dining room.

He's a plasterer and painter, too. Mr. Short searched high and low for a dark red paint for the living room and dining room. After several coats of another brand failed to cover white, he finally found Pratt & Lambert Red Seal. He also built the walnut grandfather clock in the front hall from a kit. A high-energy 61-year-old, he and three friends spent a week in October biking from Pittsburgh to Washington, D.C., via the Great Allegheny Passage and C&O Canal Towpath.

Mr. Short is relieved that, after 30 years, the house is mostly finished. But you never know, he said.

"One time my daughter was shaving her legs and put her foot through a wall," he said. "That was the start of a huge project. What a hoot!"

Their only regret is that they didn't start sooner.

"We kept putting it off because we had little kids running around," Mrs. Short said. "We are pretty much done. But I'd love him to finish the stairway to the third floor ... ."