Seeing Potential by the Sea

Ask Sam Malandrucco, 3, what he likes to do at the Shore, and he shrugs.

"I dunno," he says and goes back to pushing a toy bus full of animals across the hardwood floor of his family's North Wildwood condo.

Mary Jane Malandrucco insists that is not so, and as his mother talks about playing in the ocean, digging in the sand, and riding bikes, Sam gives a wide smile, then tumbles playfully across the floor.

Sam was still a baby in 2007 when Malandrucco came back from a girls' weekend at the Shore that included making a bid on a condo - without telling her husband, Greg.

"Instead of trying to talk him into things, it works better if he tries to talk me out of it," said Mary Jane Malandrucco, 47, a sales rep for Element K, an e-learning company.

Greg Malandrucco could have made a good case against buying this condo. The two-bedroom, two-bath unit, built in the early 1980s, was in poor shape.

"I was apprehensive, to say the least," said Greg Malandrucco, 49, an IT manager for the Tredyffrin/Easttown School District in Chester County. "All I could see was work, and all Mary Jane could see was the beach."

Ocean views helped sell him on the place. So did the garage, which he would use for staging his renovation work - taking out and replacing everything except the smoke detector and the carbon monoxide alarm on the way to creating a cozy vacation home.

The couple, whose primary home is in West Chester, bonded over a renovation project when they met 22 years ago. Mary Jane Malandrucco tried to repaint the kitchen of her Mays Landing condo soon after she met her future husband. It did not exactly turn out as planned, so Greg Malandrucco offered to redo it.

"That bad paint job led to a new kitchen," she said.

Together, the couple, who married in 2000, have bought, fixed up, and eventually sold homes in Chesterbrook and Sicklerville. Greg Malandrucco, who learned about repairs while working at his father's deli, did most of the home improvements himself, building on those skills (and buying tools, he says) with every project.

Both liked the Shore. Mary Jane Malandrucco, who grew up in Pottstown, worked in Stone Harbor during summers as a college student; Greg Malandrucco, who grew up in West Philadelphia and Havertown, spent two weeks in Wildwood with his family every year.

"I always thought that I'd eventually buy something at the Shore," Mary Jane Malandrucco said.

So she kept her eyes open. Still, she acknowledged, when she saw the listing for the North Wildwood condo in the newspaper, "the pictures were so awful."

The condo had not been updated since the building was constructed in the 1980s. It still had wood paneling, shag carpet, and dated wallpaper in the kitchen.

"But the ocean view kept me looking," Mary Jane Malandrucco said - you can see the sea from the living room, kitchen, and bedrooms. She toured the place on that weekend away with her friends and put in the offer.

The couple bought the place and, swayed by Mary Jane Malandrucco's vision, Greg Malandrucco went to work, taking on projects at the condo between the freelance jobs he was doing then.

He started in the kitchen, taking everything down to the studs. He kept the basic floor plan, but changed the cabinet layout a bit and substituted an island for the wrought-iron railing that separated the kitchen from the sunken living room.

They put seating on both sides - regular chairs in the kitchen, bar stools in the living room - so the island could be used for dining, which freed up space.

Then Greg Malandrucco ripped up all the rugs - no small feat considering that the previous owner carpeted just about everything, including the bathrooms and on top of the half-inch molding in every room of the house.

The Malandruccos replaced the floors with hardwood, except for tile in the kitchen and bathrooms. They added white wainscoting to the bathrooms, too, and a walk-in shower to the master bath.

A fireplace in the living room was covered with faux-brick wallpaper. Greg Malandrucco redid the tile, hearth, and mantel.

Out went floral wallpaper and wood paneling. In came drywall, so the walls could be repainted in cool, beachy blues and greens. Greg Malandrucco also added white trim and molding throughout the house and wired the ceilings for surround-sound speakers and a fan in the living room.

The laundry area was reconfigured for a full-size stacked washer and dryer.

Sam's bedroom has special bunk beds - a twin on top and a full-size bed on the bottom - for guests and sleepovers.

"This is my big-boy bed," he said, proudly jumping on the bottom bunk. His playpen now holds his toys.

Mary Jane Malandrucco confesses that her husband is the one with the handyman skills. She just picks out the properties and envisions what a space could be.

"Greg and I have always been able to see . . . potential," she said.

There were complications, naturally, like the water damage they found around the living room's sliding glass door. The refrigerator caught fire, so they lived out of a cooler until a new one arrived, sooner than expected.

Not that their son minded.

"Sam liked playing in the refrigerator box," Mary Jane Malandrucco said.