Restoring the facade of a 125-year-old row house in Lawrenceville is no small feat. Anne Davis did it so well that she was named a runner-up in the small project category of the PG's Renovation Inspiration Contest.

What's even more impressive is that she also helped transform the identical townhouses on each side of her Main Street home, finding buyers who were nearly as determined as she was to make these houses look as good as the day they were built.

"One is a developer who bought a place in horrible condition, fixed it and resold it. The other man was eager to move to Lawrenceville," she said. "They've been fantastic neighbors."

Ms. Davis' house is the middle of three triplets built as rentals in 1882-83 by William Johnston, a manufacturer of machinery and hardware. Ms. Davis, 55, bought her house in May 2000 for $43,000. The first thing she did was to jam a screwdriver through the wallboard below a window to see if the original paneling was intact.

"I was dying to know what was there," she said, delighted to find old woodwork. "I like old buildings and I love the Victorian style."

Although she had stripped wallpaper and paint before, she had no real experience in restoration. No matter. Over the next five years, she worked on the inside and outside as time and money allowed.

Inside, she had walls moved to restore the old layout and had Allegheny Woodwork mill new door trim and two-piece baseboard to match the few pieces that survived previous owners' remodeling efforts. Many rooms had no trim at all, looking a little like a man "not having a tie wearing a suit," Ms. Davis said.

Judges from the Post-Gazette and contest co-sponsor Community Design Center of Pittsburgh didn't get to see the interior because Ms. Davis entered only the facade renovation, which came in just under $50,000, the maximum for small project entries. But if the care that went into the exterior is any indication, the interior is a testimonial to one woman's vision and effort.

"You are delusional when you buy a fixer-upper. You have to be committed to helping [a house] out," she said.

For starters, Ms. Davis took down the ubiquitous aluminum awning and had Mark Gardner of Mars remove a young blue spruce that would have soon obscured the entire facade. She moved privet hedges to the back yard and had Bethlehem Wire and Fence install a small steel fence.

Next she had Kevin Coyne of Coyne Masonry strip and repoint the brick and Eric Mason of Mason Painting paint the corbeling, dormer and other exterior trim.

Her first thought was to paint the trim blue and soft gray. Then she happened to drive by some townhouses in Shadyside painted glossy black.

"It was very simple and very handsome. I said 'That's it! The heck with the New England colors.'"

Ms. Davis added a central red stripe on the center of the corbels to match the brick and found a door and light fixture at Construction Junction, one of her favorite stops.

The door, an impossibly thick interior door, was a near-perfect match for the original one on her left neighbor's house.

She also used his original four-pane windows as the template for custom Kolbe wood windows from Al Lorenzi Building Products.

One of her last moves was to tear out "my perfectly fine" concrete sidewalk and have the Concrete Man of Verona lay reclaimed bricks from behind the house in a bed of limestone gravel. Finding bits of the original brick sidewalk inspired her:

"I love walking on a brick sidewalk as I enter the house," she said.

Finally finished, she has no regrets.

"I like physical work. … I feel as if I know this house. I'm not afraid of the house."

But she'll never do another.

"Physically, I don't have another one left in me. Besides, I love this community. It's convenient to my work [at Magee Womens Research Institute in Oakland]. I can walk to the grocery store and the bank. And the school is wonderful."

That last part is important because she adopted a daughter, Luknam, 14, from Thailand a year ago.

"And that has remodeled my life," Ms. Davis said, laughing.

Kevin Kirkland can be reached at kkirkland@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1978.