The meaning of a home is determined not by the way it looks - a window with a funny shape, a set of columns at the front door, a tiled roof, etc - but rather by the experiences of those who live there or visit. In this renovation, located on the Allegheny River three miles upriver from the city of Pittsburgh, we have combined several strategies that we feel will create a set of memorable experiences. Our first choice was to preserve the loadbearing masonry ground floor but demolish - and subsequently rebuild - the insubstantial 2x4 framed building above. The second was to clad the new volumes in Cor10 steel, providing a colorful, tough, industrial look that relates to Pittsburgh's storied past.