After the remodel, the symmetric dormers, shingle sheathing, windows with divided lights and a covered walkway have transformed this house.

Prior to its facelift, the Romano house was no different from countless two-story homes that filled the need for housing as the city and suburbs grew.

Stephen and Juliet Romano decided there were enough positive points to their 1960s rambler in Madison Park to justify a remodel and cosmetic facelift. With shingle and colonial-revival trim, the building now has a welcoming street presence and a pleasant garden prospect.

The couple had lived on Capitol Hill and liked their traditional home. But with a growing family, they decided to search for a house with more room. It was Juliet who pulled up to this house in the little-known northwest section of Madison Park called Canterbury, looked inside, and called her husband. "I liked the neighborhood, the house had decent spaces, and I thought it had potential. But it was quite different from what we were living in."

After 2 1/2 years in the house, the couple embarked on their first remodel — a new kitchen, den, butler's pantry and a side entry to make it easy to bring groceries in from the garage. To accommodate the changes, they revamped a small tool room off the garage, turned a nanny's bedroom into a computer work room, tucked the laundry into a closet, put in storage, and added a back stair and a mud room.

A canopy crowns a French day bed in their daughter's bedroom. Fabrics here and in the master bedroom are from the English firm of Colfax and Fowler.

Previous owners had made the living room more traditional with cabinets and columns and the fireplace-surround treatments. The Romanos took their cues from this in their remodel.

It was another 2 1/2 years before they were ready to tackle a major remodel and facelift, with help from architect Pete Sandall of Sandall Norrie Architects and Joseph McKinstry Construction Co. As Juliet points out, "We needed to live here for a while to figure out what that would be." Ultimately, this remodel encompassed a number of interior and exterior changes. They included extending the second floor over the garage for a family room, a bathroom and closet; reconfiguring spaces upstairs to increase the size of the master bath and make an office and larger closet from a small bedroom; and adding a dormer to enlarge their daughter's room. While only about 700 square feet were added, the house was transformed and its spaces re-thought for maximum use.

The greatest challenge was figuring out how to turn the board-and-batten-sheathed, flat-roofed box into a pleasant house that evoked the image of a traditional home. In that, both the architect and his clients were on the same track. For style and character, they looked to residences in the planned community of Seaside, Fla., and to New England. "Both Stephen and I loved shingle-style houses," Julia says. Though she had grown up near Memphis, where the style is not prominent, she and her Seattle-raised husband were familiar with it from trips to coastal towns on Long Island and in New England. In these locales, shingle with colonial-revival trim is common, and they loved its dignified look.

While Sandall understood what the Romanos wanted, he was skeptical that their house, with its low-pitched roof, could handle that kind of treatment. He tackled the problem by popping out two dormers to give it presence — drawing attention from the roofline and toward the garden façade. The architect took cues for his trim molding from the colonial-revival living room that was the legacy of previous owners.

The south garden wall of the kitchen was opened up into a shallow bay with French doors and sidelights.

A salvaged wood fireplace surround and mantel give a traditional appearance to what had been a simple modern fireplace. Juliet's childhood in rural Tennessee is reflected in the country furniture in the home.

For Juliet, the reference to Seaside was not coincidental. "Seaside houses are placed on the street the same way this house is (meaning that the entry is at the side rather than the front of the house). Seaside gives a modern twist to traditional architecture, which I think this is — a youthful, traditional look."

The newly crafted façade — punctuated with French doors and windows and a broad covered patio transitioning to the lawn — forms an inviting relationship of house to yard. The garden has seating areas at both ends of the lawn and in the side yard off the dining room.

As with the interior, Juliet had thoughts about how she wanted her garden to look, and brought her sketched ideas to landscape designer Carol Eland. "I wanted the curving grass areas and the parterre areas. It wasn't a simple thing to achieve, since it was a wet site. They had to take out clay, bring in sand and topsoil, and lay out a new irrigation system before any planting could take place." Plum trees, Japanese maples, pink dogwood, magnolias, Japanese snowball and a pear tree support a garden of annuals and perennials inspired by the couple's visits to Sissinghurst and other English gardens.

The principal challenge was to deter people from coming in the "back" door adjoining the garage and facing the street. Instead, guests needed to be directed through a gate and along the side of the house to the real "front" door. A stamped-concrete paved path, plantings and lighting have accomplished the task.

For Juliet, this is her favorite aspect of the new face of their house. "At night, with lights on and the gate open, it's so inviting-looking — it's wonderful. I love it."

Lawrence Kreisman is program director for Historic Seattle and author of "Made to Last: Historic Preservation in Seattle and King County." Steve Ringman is a Seattle Times staff photographer.