From Ashes

In 1998, Curtis and Becky Horton, along with their son, Andy, moved in to their dream home. From the oak floors to the unstained pine woodwork and cabinetry, each detail was painstakingly planned by the family. It was a labor of love. Curtis says Becky had the floor plan stuck to the family refrigerator for five years. And six years later, just as the finishing touches were being put on the home's interior, there was a fire.

Curtis and Becky remember the details like it was yesterday. On July 23, 2004, the family had gone to a party to welcome Becky's nephew home from Iraq. They returned home late in the evening, with Becky's great-nephew, Gregory, in tow. He and Andy planned to spend the night in the playroom adjacent to Andy's bedroom. The room was directly over the garage. Becky remembers working on the computer until 1:30 a.m. She remembers looking into the garage and checking to make sure that all of the animals were in for the night. When she found everything as it should be, she went to bed and quickly drifted off to sleep.

It wasn't more than a half hour later when Andy woke up and noticed the flames outside. They were already reaching the windows. He woke his cousin and ran to the hallway, shouting for his parents. Curtis still remembers the sound coming from the door to the garage, where the fire had started.

"It sounded like cats clawing at the door," Curtis says.

He, Becky and the boys were already evacuating by the time the smoke alarm went off. About 10 minutes after they'd left the house, Becky says they watched as the room in which Andy and Gregory were just sleeping collapsed into the garage. Andy, who was 10 years old at the time, had saved all of their lives.

When the fire was over, only the back wall and east wall of the house were still standing. What was left of the roof, the front and the west walls needed to be removed. The Horton family lived with Becky's sister for a few days before moving into a hotel for three weeks. (Curtis says he told Becky not to get used to the maid service and daily breakfasts.) The family lived in a rental home for a year. And finally, they were able to come home again.

While the Horton family didn't change the layout of the home (beyond moving one wall to make the kitchen six feet wider), interior decorator Cindy Love, who worked on the décor of both homes, says the interior is definitely different.

"The house was such a mess after the fire, and I didn't want to live with that memory," Becky explains. It was hard enough to move back, she adds, so she wanted it to feel like a new house.

While the home once seemed split between Curtis' more formal tastes and Becky's more relaxed vision (so much so, they say, that it was like there were "his" and "her" sides), now friends tell them that you can walk into any room and feel cozy. Cindy says the interior follows the French country style. The reds, golds and blues are part of the traditional French country color scheme, she explains. All of the floors, woodwork and cabinets are alder. (Curtis doesn't like the knots in the wood and teases Becky about the holes in the floor, Becky says.)

From the entryway, the dining room is set off to the left. Two salvaged antique beams bookend the entrance to the dining room. The walls and ceiling are painted a Wilmington tan, Cindy says. The glaze on the walls deepens the tone, providing a slight contrast to the glaze-free ceiling. The dining room shares a wall with the garage, Becky explains, and it was hit hard by the fire. Previously, all the furnishings were antiques, Cindy says. Today, everything in the dining room is newly purchased. A buffet table with a distressed finish stands against the main wall, sandwiched between twin inset china cabinets in each corner. (This was replicated from a previous house the Hortons lived in, Becky says.) The Homer Laughlin china imprinted with Currier & Ives scenes were replaced, "with the help of eBay," Becky says. The tables and chairs have a honey finish. The table's legs are antiqued white.

In the living room, chairs with rush seats are placed opposite the brick red sofa. Cindy points out the tassel trims and alternating floral and plaid fabrics used in the pillows are all details of French country décor. The heavily carved occasional tables are all creations of California-based Fremarc Designs, Cindy says.

The kitchen, Becky says, is the heart of the Horton home. The deep red color of the walls' paint was custom-designed, Cindy says. (The walls are also textured and glazed.) The backsplash is travertine, the countertops are granite, and the cabinets follow the French country style with rope trim, glass panes, a plate rack and cutout designs, Cindy explains. The kitchen wall was expanded to make room for a larger refrigerator and an additional oven. Both, Becky says, come in handy during their large family gatherings. There's a bit of a rooster theme going on, Becky notes. They're seen in the ceramics on the island and countertops, on the floor mat in front of the sink, and even the salt and pepper shakers carry the rooster theme. "Before, there were rabbits," she says.

The hearth room has a warm, casual feel that is reflected in the dining table. If there's not a group of family members gathered around it, Becky says, there's a mass of teenagers sitting there. And in the lighting over the table, there's, well, more rooster. Built-in bookshelves match the kitchen cabinets; an oil painting of a country scene hangs over the fireplace.

Upstairs, the room that was once Andy's is now a guest room that they call the "black and white room." (Andy now has his own private pad in the basement.) Becky says she had two friends stay over recently, and they actually fought over who got to sleep in that guest room. A black and white toile papers the south wall and is repeated in the bedding. Black and white striped paper was used on the rest of the walls to provide contrast, Cindy says. The small wicker loveseat, as well as the trunk, dresser and wardrobe all survived the fire, Becky says.

Andy's old playroom is now designated storage space. It's the holiday room, Becky says, and it contains hundreds of decorations for Halloween, a favorite family holiday, and an entire Christmas village Becky was able to replace (again, with the help of eBay).

In the second guest room, the princess dresser and wardrobe also survived the fire, though each needed to be restored and refinished. A red and white quilt rests on the bed.

The African violets Becky inherited from her mother were lost in the fire, she says, but she was able to grow more from starts her sister gave her.

In the master bedroom, Cindy had just hung the curtains and brought over the floral toile bedding when the fire started a few days later. Since Becky and Curtis had barely had time to enjoy the new fabrics, they decided to order them again. The slipcovers for the two armchairs arrived late, Cindy says, so they never saw the fire. The secretary desk survived the fire and was restored. In the master bath, the ceramic tile on the floor mimics the tile in the kitchen. The cabinets are antiqued white. The countertops are the same tile as the floor. The wallpaper is fleur de lys. On either side of the sunken Jacuzzi bathtub are built-in shelving units with curved tops. In the walk-in shower, the walls and floor are marble.

Curtis says that the only room he had a say-so in was his office. The textured walls, plaid carpet and built-in bookshelves lend a more masculine feel to the room. The deer, Curtis says, was shot by a friend in Kentucky. It, too, survived the fire.

While things have returned to normal for the Horton family, it's obvious that the fire-and the hardships it imposed on the family-will never be forgotten. Becky continues to work on removing the smoke smell and stains from a treasured quilt given to her by her mother. It's getting better, but the colors are also fading, she says. Pieces of furniture that were restored are showing signs that the fire left them damaged forever.

While an official cause of the fire has never been determined, the Hortons suspect that their 2000 Ford Expedition was to blame. (In 1999 and 2005, Ford says it recalled more than three million vehicles to replace cruise control switches that could start under-hood fires. Fires could occur when the vehicles were parked or in operation. The Hortons received their recall notice a week after the fire, Curtis says.) Curtis says he won't park next to a Ford anymore, but Becky actually goes a step further. If she sees the car's owner, she'll stop and warn the person about the potential danger in hopes of sparing others from what she went through. Curtis also passes on the lessons he learned from the fire. People think that by insuring a house-even a relatively new one-for what it was built for, they'll be okay, Curtis says. And it seems like second nature to be wary of insurance agents' advisements, he adds. But with housing costs as high as they are, he says, people need to take another look at their insurance policies. (The Hortons were, fortunately, covered by their policy, Curtis says.)

Still, Curtis and Becky seem to have withstood this tragedy and are now trying to reach others with the lessons they say they've learned.

--Photo by Edward  Biamonte