Water is focus

From beginning, view of Wilde Lake was most important

By Diane Reynolds | Special to The Sun

June 13, 2008

The deck railing has cable wire to open up the view of the lake. The new deck floor is a wood-grain synthetic in a warm color to match the cedar rails. (Sun photo by Amy Davis / June 6, 2008)

Joyce and Karl Ardo wanted a house by the water and a room with a view.

The couple focused their search on Wilde Lake, an open area teeming with wildlife in the middle of Columbia.

It was 2004, during the real estate frenzy, and several waterfront townhouses that they bid on fell through.

Then in August, a single-family house on the lake came on the market.

Ardo toured the home before her husband got there. It was exactly what she had envisioned.

"My idea was to revitalize a house," she said. Within a half-hour, she had remodeled the home in her mind.

The raised contemporary rancher was dark, with wood floors stained almost black, paneling on some walls, yellow laminate in the kitchen, and small, chopped-up rooms, Ardo said.

She immediately decided that the wall separating the living room and kitchen had to come down.

"The goal was to make the lake the visual," she said. "The question was: Could this be done affordably?"

The Ardos bid on the house, putting in an escalation clause, and won out over five other contenders.

They brought in Brian Brantley, a contractor they had worked with on their previous home, a Colonial in Ellicott City that had won a design award. They also consulted a structural engineer.

Both agreed that the work could be done for a reasonable cost.

The Ardos bought the 2,500-square-foot house for $450,000, and between August and Thanksgiving in 2004, worked with Brantley to transform it into an open, light-filled space.

"It profoundly changed the house to take down one wall," Karl Ardo said.

Now five sliders offer panoramic views of Wilde Lake from two sides of the large, airy space created by merging living room, dining room and kitchen.

The Ardos replaced the linoleum on the kitchen floor with a pale hardwood and had the hardwood floors in the living room and dining room refinished in the same light shade. A deck wraps around two sides of the room.

The couple took out the flat ceiling in the master bedroom to create a soaring cathedral ceiling with skylights and added a small deck that overlooks the lake.

Across from the master bedroom, the Ardos converted the bathroom into a powder room, removing the tub. In its place, they installed a washer-dryer.

The couple then turned the bedroom next to their bedroom into an oversized master bath with a whirlpool tub, a separate shower and dual sinks on separate walls, allowing each to have the height and size they preferred.

The Ardos used the Internet extensively to get cut-rate deals.