When you know, you know. And when interior designer Leanne Ford and her husband Erik Allen Ford found a circa-1900 house right outside of Pittsburgh, they couldn’t ignore that age-old adage (or their gut). “It sat empty for years. I truly felt like it was waiting for us,” Leanne says.

The couple moved from Los Angeles in 2020—with their then-baby daughter Ever—to embark on their journey to transform the rustic-elegant space into their family’s forever home. Now, nearly three years later, the Fords have created a beautiful, healthy home environment that is perfect for hosting and nesting alike.

The Fords wanted to wholeheartedly embrace the Pennsylvanian home’s traditional charm with their redesign, keeping original details from the 1900s —like gorgeous molding, well-preserved floors, a wood-clad library, and even some tiles and wallpapers—in the revamp. “It has been creatively fulfilling as a designer, mixing the ‘fancy’ and rather traditional style that we inherited from the original architecture with our love for a laid-back and undone casual style,” she says. “In many of the rooms, all I did was add our modern furniture and art—it just needed a little funk.”

There were a few spaces, however, that needed to be totally gutted, including the kitchen, bathroom, and basement. When the Fords found major mold behind old (and leaking) radiant pipes, the family realized the charm of the historic home stopped there, and some things—like their HVAC—needed to be contemporized. “Now, I am the first to admit I love radiant heat. In old homes, I tend to keep the radiators whenever possible,” she says, “But as we dove into this basement renovation, I had a serious internal debate about working with the current and very old radiant system. At the end of the day the right decision for my family was to modernize our heating and cooling systems.”

Similar to her overall construction mentality, Leanne wanted to do this process only once, and “after loads of research,” she turned to Trane Residential for her family’s new heating and cooling system.

Knowing her family also has a terrible time with allergies, the Fords decided to incorporate the Trane CleanEffects® Whole Home Air Cleaner to reduce the presence of potential asthma and allergy attack triggers, including dust, pollen, mildew, and more. CleanEffects, which is 100 times more effective than a standard one-inch filter and is even certified asthma & allergy friendly®, gives the Fords confidence that their HVAC system is working continuously behind-the-scenes to keep their home’s indoor environment clean and healthy as they have guests come and go.

While the vintage lighting or gorgeous wallpaper may be what first catches visitors’ eyes when they walk in the door, in the end, what they can’t see is the real star of this historic home’s makeover.

“The truth is,” Leanne says, “how you feel in a space is just as important, if not more, than how it looks.”

Learn more about Trane Residential and clean air for your home at trane.com/residential.

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