See the Giffels home in the NY Times

David and Gina Giffels with children Evan and Lia, now 12 and 9

Ever wonder where Beacon Journal columnist David Giffels lives? Well run out real quick to get a copy of the Home and Garden Section of the New York Times which has a delightful story about the 12 years spent by David and his wife, Gina, restoring a 1913 Tudor house.

The photo by photographer Jeff Swenson is one of 14 used with the story. Here’s the lead on the story by Joyce Wadler:

[As usual, click on the headline to see it all]

IN these times of mortgage crisis and credit card debt, of people living over their heads and losing their homes, it may be instructive to visit David and Gina Giffels, proud owners of an exquisitely renovated 1913 Tudor house, with six fireplaces, a solarium and a billiards room, which is well within their means, in part because they paid $65,000.

It is true, this was 12 years ago here in Akron, as the city was struggling to come out of its Rust Belt doldrums, and at the time the house was not so exquisite. It was, in fact, as the couple learned only at the closing, about to be condemned. There were large holes in the roof, various furry woodland animals in residence, a barely functional heating and plumbing system. The roof over the master bedroom leaked so badly that the previous owner had placed 55 aluminum baking pans on the floor to catch the rain. Passers-by, glimpsing the house through trees and brush, assumed it was deserted.

Saving this house has taken David Giffels, a columnist at The Akron Beacon Journal and sometime rock musician, and his wife, Gina, a special education teacher, 12 years. And the renovation, most of which Mr. Giffels has done on his own, is not finished. The strain on their marriage, as Mr. Giffels admits in his sweet and funny book, “All the Way Home: Building a Family in a Falling-Down House,” which will be published next month by HarperCollins, has not been inconsiderable. Weekends, vacations, time Mr. Giffels might have spent with his two children, have been given over to such projects as removing, cleaning, and re-caulking the 733 windowpanes in the house. (He counted.)

On the other hand, except for the mortgage on this house, the Giffelses have no debt. This is not only because they have done so much of the renovation themselves, but because they do not have and never have had credit cards. Their feeling, anachronistic as the servants’ call button in their dining room, is that if you don’t have the money for something, you don’t buy it. It is for this reason that none of the six fireplaces in their house are functional: they do not have the money to fix them. If this sounds extremely practical, you should know that the story of the Giffelses and the falling down house is as romantic as they come, tied up with not just the love of a house, but the love of a city. Ask Mr. Giffels (who once tried to evict squirrels from the house by playing guitar really loudly) how much money he’s put into it over the years, and you’ll get the idea.