Making New Memories of Home

The best financial planning, however, doesn't diminish the emotional complications.

Second-generation owners note that it takes longer to become king of a castle when the former rulers drop by frequently. Parents may get offended when their children decide to gut the kitchen they remodeled in the 1970s or '80s. Siblings who forage in familiar cabinets or drawers get disoriented when things aren't where they used to be. House rules can change.

Tammy Thomas, 50, remembers that Patrick's several brothers and sisters at first brought their dogs into the house when they visited. While that had been allowed by Patrick's mother, the younger Thomases didn't welcome the extra mess, although they had a dog, too. Parents' houses tend also to be a repository for everyone's stuff, she and others noted, so siblings don't always appreciate being called to collect their old furniture and boxes.

For Stephen Vermillion, 48, a lobbyist who grew up near the Molloy family, the chance to buy his parents' house in Barnaby Woods in the District was the "greatest deal." He and his wife, Jennifer, were newlyweds when they took over the house in 1994, for the tax-assessed value of $325,000. The neighborhood was convenient and, although the family used to travel overseas to his father's government postings, "this was the place we always came back to." An uncle still lives down the street, and other relatives still are scattered nearby.

But taking over the childhood home "comes with a little baggage," he said, especially when it comes time for repairs. The house had been rented out for several years and also served as a group house for Stephen, his brothers and some friends in early post-college jobs. So right away it needed work.

Jennifer Vermillion, 46, a former AOL marketing manager, said she felt unsure at first. "I felt I was trying to decorate the space, which was his mother's space."

They had no qualms ripping out the shaggy green wall-to-wall carpet from the first floor and the dated wallpaper in the dining room. But they approached other projects more gingerly, such as remodeling the kitchen that Stephen's mother had redone 30 years before. "It was high end, for 1974," he said.

They also stopped short of repainting a kitchen door, inscribed with Vermillion children's heights, circa 1977. Stephen has added the heights of their own children, Joe and Sarah, now 9 and almost 12. They also left the Led Zeppelin stickers on the built-in drawers in the finished attic, formerly a bedroom shared by Stephen's brothers. "They're part of the character," Jennifer said.

Molloy's first change to his new house was replacing the pachysandra in the front yard with grass. None of his siblings objected, he said. "They had bad memories of trying to rake and weed the pachysandra, as I did."

He and Meg recently bumped out the back of the house to create a more modern kitchen-family-room addition. They also added a first-floor powder room, which the family always had wanted but couldn't find a place for.

But the front of the house hasn't changed much, nor have many of the rooms. A wooden nook in the dining room used to hold the family telephone. Now it has a potted plant.

Davey, the Temple University psychologist, said a tangent to the adage "You can't go home again" is "You can, just don't expect it to stay the same."

Neighborhoods evolve, too. Second-generation owners notice mostly the increase in traffic. Children don't play in the streets the way they used to, and landscaping has changed.

Still, there is a sense of family continuity that they enjoy and can pass along to their children. The house also provides a natural venue for family gatherings.

Over the years, the Thomases also re-landscaped their yard and built a kitchen-family room addition. But "most of the bones of the house are the same," Patrick Thomas said. Inherited furniture, including his mother's dining room table and grandmother's upright piano, fills the living and dining areas.

"When the family gets together, we always do it here," he said. But without all the dogs.