It’s hard to believe that Mike and Kim Gedgoudas’ Riverchase home was once the ugly duckling of the neighborhood, drawing sighs and winces from passersby. But as the story goes, the ugly duckling eventually transforms into a beautiful swan.

“The ugly house,” as some called it, is ugly no more. There’s even a real-life swan swimming in the backyard to prove it.

The Gedgoudas family, consisting of Mike, Kim, son Andrew, daughter Sidney, dogs Beaux and Sadie, cats Tinkerbell and Tucker, and two unnamed frogs, moved into their Water Willow Lane home this past August. Mike and Kim had no intentions of moving from their smaller Riverchase home, but a chance glimpse of the five-bedroom, five-and-a-half bathroom spread changed their minds.

“We drove by and I said, ‘That is the most beautiful house I’ve seen in Riverchase,'” said Kim, a stay-at-home mom and former social worker at The Amelia Center at Children’s of Alabama. Mike is attorney in downtown Birmingham. “It was one of those things that was meant to be,” Kim said.

The admiration grew when the Gedgoudas took their first steps inside, and despite their best attempts to dislike the house, they couldn’t.

“We were hoping we wouldn’t like it,” Kim said. “But as we kept walking, we turned to each other and said, ‘This is bad. We love it.'”

To read more about the Gedgoudas’ Riverchase home, check out the March 2014 issue of Hoover’s Magazine. Find your copy here.