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Done at last.

People taking this weekend's Greensboro Symphony Guild's Tour of Homes will understand why it took four years to restore the colonial-revival house at 314 Isabel St. in Fisher Park to its original beauty.

After a 2004 fire gutted the 18-room house with its curious two-story arched portico, owner Paula White was determined to rebuild.

She hired researcher Diana Young of Salisbury to solve the house's mysteries and to successfully have it declared a Guilford County Historic Landmark.

Besides documenting the house's elaborate architecture, which includes maple floors, elaborate fireplaces, beautiful light fixtures and door hardware, Young set the record at least straighter on the dwelling's origins. For years, the house has been called the C.P. Carmichael House, dating to circa 1922.

But some architecture lovers thought the house older. One story had Fisher Park founder Basil Fisher building it at the turn of the 20th century for his daughter. Another had the builder as a railroad executive who wanted to be near the trains that pass on the tracks paralleling Church Street next to the house.

Neither story appears true. Young traced deeds to 1906 with a Greensboro lawyer A.L. Brooks owning what was a vacant lot at Isabel and Church streets. That year Brooks sold the lot to Z.T. Brooks. Young's report says Z.T. Brooks worked for Brooks Lumber Co., founded in 1895 and still in business.

But Terry Brooks of Brooks Lumber, great-grandson of company founder T.T. Brooks, says Z.T. Brooks didn't belong to the family.

It turns out Z.T. Brooks was a local physician and the father of lawyer Brooks.

It's not clear if Z.T. built the house. Probably not because city directories show him living on Spring Street. He sold the property after a year, and it continued to change hands frequently until 1922 when cotton broker C.P. Carmichael bought it. Whether Carmichael or a previous owner built the house isn't clear.

After four years, Carmichael sold the house. It again underwent many ownership changes until 1938 when Roy Stanley, founder of Gate City Roofing, bought it. The Stanleys stayed until 1979 when Paula White bought it. She says the first time she saw the house, she had to have it.

In the 1980s, White and her then husband renovated the house without tampering with the original woodwork, inside and outside Corinthian columns, stained glass windows and other fine touches, including a goldfish pond in the rear. Then, on July 11, 2004, fire gutted the house. White barely escaped.

Contractors said tear it down, but White wouldn't hear of it. Finally, New Age Builders, specializing in historic restorations, promised to make the house whole again.

Negotiating an insurance settlement delayed the start of work until 2007. Salvaging items and finding matching reproductions slowed the work.

The end came this June, although White still is returning furnishings salvaged from the fire. Those include a wooden ladder on rollers for the wood-paneled library. The ladder is from the old Phipps Hardware and Gift Shop, a business her parents owned.

The house will be one of six on the Symphony Guild tour this Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

"I'm the only fool who would have taken on a project like this,'' White says of the renovation, which she says was covered by insurance.

She says a sense of obligation motivated her. Greensboro has no other house like it, especially with a lofty portico. Passers-by have long identified the house by the portico.

"I feel,'' she says, "like I'm the caretaker of this property.''

Contact Jim Schlosser at 601-9879 or beale1@clearwire.net