Getting It Together

THE HOUSE WAS UPSIDE DOWN, OUT OF THEIR PRICE RANGE, AND A total architectural mutt: a cinder-block ranch on the bottom, a contemporary loft on the top. And yet, oddly, it turned out to be perfect.

The couple, who were looking for a house for themselves and their three young children, put in a low bid for the place on a whim. It wasn't their dream home, they reasoned, but it had potential. "I wanted a house on a hill overlooking the water for $400,000, and I couldn't figure out why people couldn't help me," the husband now says with a laugh. "This didn't really have anything that we wanted. But we felt we wanted to take the chance." It was, after all, in a Boston suburb, it bordered conservation land, and it had views of a neighboring golf course. The couple figured they could make changes over time as their budget allowed.

"As finances got better, our ambitions got bigger," says the husband, who runs a high-tech company.

After living in the home for several years, the couple hired Boston architect Gary Wolf, who told them the main problem with their house was that it lacked a cohesive plan. Originally built around World War II as a basic 1,200-square-foot, five-room ranch with a family recreation room in the basement, the home became a bit of an oddity among its neat Cape neighbors when, in the 1980s, an owner added a second story. With soaring ceilings and a contemporary roofline oddly angled so the artist-owner could have a studio filled with north light, the house took on a modernist air.

The first floor - the original ranch house - was dark and contained the entry, sitting room, and bedrooms (a master suite had been carved from the old kitchen and bath), while the airy top floor housed a large living room, kitchen, dining room, studio, and loft, and it opened onto a rear deck. It was a design layer cake that wasn't all that appetizing. "When you walked in on the ground floor, you had no idea what was upstairs," says Wolf. "It was two totally different houses."

Wolf was determined to pull it all together, and that meant adding new layers to the mix. His plan was to redesign the entry and staircase, create more access to the outdoors, reconfigure the first-floor living area, replace the upstairs powder room, add on a roof deck and a second staircase, and, on the first level, create a new master-bedroom suite that included a study, dressing room, and a bath with soaking tub, two-person shower, heated-tile floors, and Greek marble on the counters and tub deck. The serene suite, with its simple lines and bank of windows looking onto the trees, took top honors in the 2005 Luxury Living Awards as "one of the most beautiful rooms in New England."

Wolf transformed the artist's loftlike studio space into a media room, where the family gathers to watch movies on a projection television.

He proposed creating a new basement rec room with plenty of space for toys and a pool table. Instead, the husband wanted a different kind of pool: a heated indoor swimming pool. "I thought, there are six months in New England where you can't go out. What about a pool?" His wife's initial response? "I laughed really hard."

But the more she thought about it, the more she liked the idea, especially since indoor pool technology had improved dramatically in recent years and Wolf could assure her that chlorine odors would not escape the basement space. "I was very concerned the house not smell like a hotel," she says. And so another layer was added. The room and its 26-foot-by-14-foot pool have become a center of family activity, made even more personal thanks to a mural painted by one of the owner's mothers depicting his childhood home in Greece.

Design and renovation, executed by G. F. Rhode Construction of Boston, took more than two years, and the completed house now encompasses about 7,000 square feet and has four bedrooms and 3 1/2 baths. Wolf used maple generously - on staircases, built-ins, bureaus, pocket doors, fireplace surrounds, and shelving. In a signature touch, he installed wood panels instead of balusters on the staircases. At the front entry, the panels have cutouts of leaves, meant to bring the outdoors in. On the stairway leading to the pool, the panels have cutouts of waves.

The couple wanted the new design to reflect nature, invite sunlight, and connect with the outdoors as much as possible. To accomplish that Wolf added windows throughout the house. "The old house didn't have many vistas," says Wolf, "so we created them."

The original first-floor living room is now a sitting room, a welcoming place to greet guests and seat them by the refurbished fireplace, which has been refaced with slate and opens on the other side of the wall to the new study. While the sitting room is furnished with a comfy bright-red whimsical sofa and two sumptuous yellow club chairs, the private study is done with understated classic contemporary pieces.

Wolf also used slate on the exterior, creating a striped pattern that emphasizes the curved wall of the new study. The wall is hugged by a staircase with steel railings that wraps around the front of the house and leads to a roof deck that can be accessed from the family/media room on the second floor.

Unlike most home renovations, this one did not include the kitchen. With all the other major projects causing disruptions, and even forcing the couple to move out for a few months, they were content with the small but workable kitchen with its simple, if outdated, cabinets and countertops. But now that the proverbial dust has settled, the couple is contemplating a new kitchen. Perhaps it will be the final layer on the cake.

"We wanted this house to, when you walked in, give people the sense that this is something interesting," says the husband. "I think with all the layers, old and new, we've achieved that. It fits together, finally."

Doreen Iudica Vigue is an assistant business editor for the Globe. E-mail her at Vigue@globe.com.