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Salvage operation

The rickety house was well worth saving, but the goat and the orange walls would have to go.

Polly Peters is not shy about calling her house a wreck - or, at least, a former wreck. When she and her husband, Bear Blake, first looked at the property in the 1970s, she recalls thinking, "There is nothing good about this place."

It was on the harbor in Portland, Maine, and the neighborhood was a bit rough. Asphalt shingles needed replacing, there was not a blade of grass in the yard, the rooms were dark and dreary, plywood was nailed across doorways to block off rooms, and, to top it all, there was a goat living in a second-floor kitchen.

"The family kept it as a pet," recalls Peters, an antiques dealer. "They had a lot of animals but took most of them to a farm. They said this goat was homesick, so they took it back here with them, and it lived in a corner of the kitchen."

Peters wanted to close her eyes and run, but Blake, an artist, opened his eyes wide and saw through the bad stuff. With every curtain he pulled aside from the large windows, a new and better view of the ocean would emerge, and he was smitten.

Lifelong Mainers, the couple had been living in a rural cottage they had built, and now they wanted to return to the vibrancy of the city. They decided to buy the three-story Victorian-era building - it had two rental apartments, in addition to the owner's unit, and two storefronts - and renovate it. Peters could have a street-level antiques shop, and Blake could look out of any window and find a subject for his art.

They had no cash for contractors, so they rolled up their sleeves and did the work themselves, shifting their bed and hot plate into each succeeding finished room. When their apartment was done, they moved on to the rental units.

"We ate a lot of Hamburger Helper from an electric frying pan, and I cried some nights," recalls Peters with a laugh. "The apartments had orange walls and black woodwork. Do you have any idea what it's like to try to paint over that? Ugh." But they finished it all, and even built a roof deck, where they could sit to watch boats in the harbor.

Fastforward to today: Peters's business is bustling, Blake's landscapes chronicle the city with color and light, and their shining house is a cornerstone of the up-and-coming neighborhood. Their backyard in summer is so lush with perennials, roses, grasses, and vegetables that it was featured on the cover of a local magazine, and Peters's decorating flourishes appeared in a 1998 coffee-table book called Country Interiors.

The couple used creativity in their renovation, covering the plaster walls with specially mixed vibrant paints (the dining room is pumpkin) and painting every floor in a different geometric pattern - here black and white checks, there red pentagons. Peters used faux painting techniques on walls and furniture long before it became a trend, and she decorated the rooms with Blake's work or intriguing ephemera she found while hunting for antiques to sell.

A garden statue of St. Francis of Assisi sits on the living room coffee table, an Egyptian sarcophagus made by Blake enlivens a hallway, and a wrought-iron bed painted purple highlights the guest room. But the bath, with a copper soaking tub placed in the middle of the room, a stainless butler's sink, and a faux-painted toilet, makes the most indelible impression.

Although it has taken decades to make the home a showplace, the tweaking never ends. But now Peters and Blake, a vibrant duo in love with jazz and adventure, are ready for a new challenge. They are looking for another home to bring to life and hope to sell this one to younger people with stronger backs who will add to its character.

"We'd like to have the same thing, only smaller," says Blake. "I look back now, and I can't believe what we did here. But this house still has endless possibilities."