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Photo: Jean Allsopp
The Neighbor Who Started It All
Elizabeth Beeler never expected to set off a chain reaction of home improvement projects along her Birmingham, AL, block. But as the magazine stylist beautified her 1931 Spanish-style bungalow, gradually transforming it from depressing to charming with a blush-pink paint job and new perennials, neighbors reacted with enthusiasm—especially Gail Harper Yeilding, a schoolteacher and pal living two houses down, and Mimi Chambers, a paralegal next door to Gail Harper.