It was 2005, the height of the real estate market (remember when?), and the Cape Cod in Blue Bell was being shown for just one day. Lisa and Paul Lonie, who had been looking for a non-tract house with a water feature, had but 20 minutes to make a bid.
Drawn to the 2-acre property by its well-tended landscaping and a large pond with a Monet-style bridge, they took the plunge.
"And I went, 'Oh my God, what are we doing?' " Lisa Lonie recalled.
With two of their three children out of the house, they would be trading their six-bedroom Victorian in East Mount Airy and its postage-stamp yard for a tight three-bedroom built in 1964 using plans purchased from Better Homes and Gardens.
Lonie described it as a "true Cape Cod," with small rooms and many doors. It also had decorative beams and extensive paneling, a legacy of the original owner/builder, who was a woodworker. "With the low ceilings, it felt claustrophobic," she said. "Our one son is 6-foot-9, and he kept bumping his head."
The great outdoors beckoned from the rear of the house, but the view was one-dimensional - the pond at the left side of the yard barely registered.
"We knew from the first walk-through that the house was screaming for a great-room addition with enough windows and doors to take in the views from three sides of the yard, as opposed to just one," Lisa Lonie said.
The challenge, Paul Lonie said, was: "How best can we tie this room into the property?" For one thing, the new owners wanted to work around distinctive trees fairly close to the house, including a crabapple, a catalpa (Johnny Smoker), and a bee-bee. For another, they wanted to capitalize their view of the pond. A third wrinkle was that they were building the addition over the well.
Working with architect Chris Luce of Luce & Associates, Horsham, they found their solutions, and the result is a bright and dramatic room whose soaring, two-story-high ceiling makes the space feel larger than its 400 square feet.
Numerous windows bring the outdoors in. A sliding door leads to a side patio with a path to the prominent 250,000-gallon pond, which a small sign proclaims as "Unc's fishing hole." When it's cold enough, the pond becomes a skating rink, while the koi population hibernates in its 5-foot depths. That other water feature, the well, is accessible through a hidden trap door in the floor of the addition.
