OPENING PAGE: Doug DeLuca in his office surrounded by salvaged pieces and antiques from his many treasure hunts. PREVIOUS PAGE: Civil War re-enactors often visit Langley Ordinary looking for relics. The library built from an old barn is filled from top to bottom with antiques that reflect America’s history. DeLuca’s own paintings add a personal touch to guest rooms. DeLuca spends most of his time entertaining his many guests in the airy gourmet kitchen. THIS PAGE: The master bedroom and ensuite bath decorated with some of his folk art paintings form a sanctuary that overlooks DeLuca’s organic garden. The nautically themed guest house also houses some of DeLuca’s treasured Americana pieces against a crisp, clean backdrop.
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agreed to purchase the three-story house and its 2.2 acres through the company in 2011, and the two embarked on a two-year renovation with plans for Bronczek to build his own house on the land — before marriage took him in another direction. DeLuca stripped the mold-ridden clapboard structure down to its bones, uncovering snapshots of its varied past in the process — the original receipt for the stairwell for $7.20 with a note asking the builder to leave the money while the owner took care of his lame horse; Margaret English’s signature, circa 1887, scrawled onto the attic wall, the lone woman among male Union soldiers who did the same; old newspapers stuffed into the walls as insulation, all a time capsule from another era. What emerged is a gorgeous example of modern-meetshistoric, a five-bedroom, five-and-a-half-bath house with outdoor living spaces, including a kitchen and dining area, on a sprawling compound that includes a two-story, twobedroom guest house with an antique nautical theme, a carriage house and an organic vegetable garden that figures prominently in a side project teaching sustainability and healthy eating. Inside, the main house boasts a gourmet kitchen with a vaulted ceiling and exposed rafters, anchored by a reclaimed farm table, as well as a wing dedicated to the headquarter offices of Federal Home and a library built from an old barn. Seen throughout are examples of DeLuca’s environmental philosophy, incorporating found objects others might throw out,“reclaimed” and re-imagined into something else, like an old dresser given new life as a bathroom sink, adding character and warmth through all its quirky details. “The goal was to keep as much of the house original and then modernize it,” DeLuca says. Though he spends the most time in the kitchen entertaining his many guests and trying out various recipes with the bounty from his garden, DeLuca admits the library is his favorite room. Rustic with all the appeal of its rough history around the edges, it epitomizes his patriotic tendencies, filled to the brim with bits of America’s revolutionary past like an oil of the Boston tea party mixed in
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with DeLuca’s own folk art paintings, a collection of muskets and rifles, and other Americana. “It tells a story,” he says. “I go in there and I see old rifles, paintings. I see tons of history.” That history is as much a part of McLean’s Langley district, he adds, which is why DeLuca makes it a point to open the house to the community, hosting the McLean Project for the Arts’ annual gala and events for other organizations when he’s not obliging out-of-town guests. “That entertaining component is very important,” he says. “I have friends from New York who are stressed out and they come out here and they think they’re on “Green Acre” or something. McLean is so pastoral but it’s within five minutes of D.C.There aren’t that many places in the country like that.”
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