Ed and Debbie Crawford are accustomed to stares and finger pointing from boaters on Smith Mountain Lake. It's their house that draws them, probably because it looks like a place where you can buy bait or a cheeseburger.

"We are always being asked if it's a marina," said Debbie. "Some people bring their boats all the way into our dock before they realize this is our home. We've even had them call out to us from out on the water and ask if we sell food."

Because of building restrictions, marinas can't be constructed as close to the lake as the Crawford's home, which was built in the late 1960s when there were no zoning laws to speak of in Franklin County. The original owner did intend to operate a marina, but the covenants and restrictions governing the Brooks Point subdivision (between channel markers B33 and B35) did not allow the land to be used for commercial purposes. So, the builder kept the building for personal use until he sold it to the Crawfords.

That was in 1979, and Debbie had just taken a job as postmaster of the Union Hall Post Office. Ed was working as a firefighter in Roanoke and they lived in Ferrum.

In those days, Debbie said, there was only an outside "johnny" at the Union Hall Post Office and no running water. She even had to mow the grass herself. But, she liked the job and decided to look for a house within a reasonable commuting distance.

The couple asked her father, Wilbert Chisom, who was an appraiser for the Virginia Department of Transportation to help them find a good buy.

"He found fault with everything we looked at, so when we found this one," Debbie said, pointing over her shoulder toward the house, "we knew he wouldn't like it so we bought it first and then asked him to look at it. It was in terrible condition but it had character and was unique. We fell in love with it.

"When Dad saw it, he said it should be burned."

Months and months of work and lots of money later, Chisom came to love the house as much as Debbie and Ed. Especially when he discovered he can sit on a swing on the front porch and fish for catfish.

"He has spent many enjoyable hours right there on that swing," Debbie said.

Ed, who calls the house a "25-years-work-in-progress," was, with the help of their son, Will, busy building stone steps up to a terraced level of the yard and alongside a stone retaining wall while Debbie introduced the house.

"I've got to get this finished before the Fourth of July," Ed explained.

That's when the couple typically entertain a crowd of between 40 to 45 people. Will's girlfriend, Heather Rule, was helping mix concrete and a niece, Casey Wampler, was toting rocks.

"All of our projects were completed because of some event," Debbie said, "That's how I get things done."

The stone wall was finished in the early 1980s for the wedding of Ed's brother, David Crawford. The Crawford's daughter, Leigh, a graduate of Coastal Carolina University in South Carolina, who is pursuing a degree in veterinary medicine and is working on an animal rescue internship in Naples, Fla., as a young girl etched her initials and the date in one of the concrete steps. Will plans to do the same in the newly laid steps.

In previous years, father and son together built a brick patio in front of the retaining wall. The bricks were from Ed's grandfather's house. There is a small fire pit incorporated into a second patio area, and out in the yard are picnic tables under a shade tree with a chimania nearby for chilly nights.

A yard sale treasure, a large wooden American Indian that appears to be 6 feet tall, is secured to a shade tree and overlooks the entire yard. There is an outside sink for cleaning fish and a tidy, attractive garden shed with a sink, shower and bathroom stool "so the kids won't track through the house."

There is another shower that runs continuously on their floating dock for cooling down during really hot summer days.

The Crawford's house and dock almost always are abuzz with activity. Besides the Fourth of July crowd, they often host family and friends on other summer weekends and other holidays. Family and friends, Debbie said, have all had a part in the "making" of their home. Not only are they there for the good times, they have helped with every project through the years.

Because the Crawfords only have two bedrooms in the house, they had to get creative with sleeping space. They added a loft in the master bedroom which doubles as Debbie's craft room when it isn't accommodating guests.

Two years ago, Debbie found an old houseboat in the bone yard of a marina and decided it would make a perfect "third bedroom." She and her mother, Ginny Chisolm, towed it home behind her boat -- a long, slow trip -- and docked it outside the living room.

"We didn't want running water in it or a bathroom. We didn't care if it ran or even had a motor," she explained, "We just needed something that floats."

Soon after they had completely overhauled the inside of the houseboat and painted the bottom, it sank because the bilge pump failed. SML Marine Volunteer Fire/Rescue pumped it out and raised it, and today it is once again a "seaworthy" bedroom that has not one but two bilge pumps. Of course, the houseboat needed another good cleaning and redecorating after the sinking incident.

"I love my houseboat," said Debbie.

Living so close to the water has its disadvantages. In 1985, the Crawfords' home flooded.

"Water was up to the bottom of the kitchen windows," Debbie said. "Fish were swimming around in my house."

The home's kitchen, living room and sunroom occupy a one-story section that sits closest to the lake. The bedrooms and bathrooms are housed in the two-story section in the rear and out of the flood zone. That's where the Crawfords added their master bedroom suite shortly after buying the house.

A mental image of fish swimming through the house makes the fishnet curtains Debbie crafted for her kitchen even more suitable. After the flood, with the help of sisters Polly Conant and Kathy Barinholtz, owners of Vermillion at Westlake, Debbie decorated her kitchen around a mermaid theme.

The kitchen cabinets, which are the originals, were painted, and the doors on some were cut and glass panes inserted. They painted the kitchen floor in neutral opposing colored squares with an eye-catching design of an antique nautical compass painted on the floor near an outside entrance. Against the wall by the door are fishing rods and reels, and a fisherman's basket is hanging from a hook on the wall.

The kitchen is a warm, inviting place to sit and have a cup of coffee, but the front-porch swing often lures the family and guests outside where it's easy to imagine doing nothing all day but swinging and fishing and staring back at boaters as they pass.

"Our kids have begged us never to sell," Debbie said.

You get the feeling they never will. She says of her home, "It is a house of memories."

Debbie left the Union Hall Post Office in 1983 to become postmaster of the Penhook Post Office. Today, she is postmaster of the Martinsville Post Office. Ed, who retired from the Roanoke Fire Department in 2001, has, along with brother David, opened Rainwater Management Solutions, a company that collects and store rain water for nonpotable use.

The Crawfords were the first owners of the Whistle Stop convenience store on U.S. 40 in Union Hall. They owned it from 1988 until 1993.