Great room and outdoor spaces accommodate a crowd

There’s more to the attractive yet unassuming house at 1229 Cooper Drive than meets the eye.

Owners Ernie and Sarah Arnold hear it frequently — “I can’t believe how much space you have here”— when someone visits for the first time or a contractor comes to do a repair. It’s a familiar refrain.

The one-and-one-half story encompasses 1,044 square feet, exclusive of a one-car garage and full basement, when it was built in the mid-50s. Little had changed about the Chevy Chase house when Sarah and her three young sons moved there in 1999.

When she and Ernie married in 2001, their blended family grew to include his two older children.

“Things were really tight when all five of our children were here. We were all crammed into this one room,” Sarah said, gesturing toward the living room.

“It was nowhere near what we wanted,” said Ernie, a commercial real estate agent with the Gibson Company. “And you have to remember that if each kid had one friend over, that’s 10 kids right there.”

To give each of the younger children their own bedroom, the couple added an owners’ suite in back. Having four bedrooms and three bathrooms gave everyone the breathing room they needed.

A few years later, the couple added a nearly 800-square-foot great room parallel to the owners’ suite but at the other end of the house. The room immediately became the heart of the home, offering ample space for everyday living and for special gatherings.

However, it almost didn’t happen that way. “We’d decided to look for a bigger house in the area, but our kids were like, “This is the greatest location we’ve ever been,’” he continued. They liked being able to walk or ride their bicycles to Cassidy Elementary and Morton Middle schools, to Ecton Park for baseball practice, and to Wheeler’s Pharmacy a block-and-a-half away for a milkshake.

Ernie and Sarah conceded. “The lot is very deep, and we decided we could add on the great room and porch and still have plenty of back yard for the kids to play in,” Ernie said.

Adjacent to the kitchen, the great room features a wood-burning stone fireplace, an artfully laid ceramic tile floor and access through French doors to the covered porch and private, nicely landscaped back yard. There’s also a small side porch that’s convenient for grilling or stacking firewood, plus a door to the wood deck that’s also accessible from the kitchen and owners’ suite.

“This is our favorite room in the house. That’s our favorite room outside the house,” Ernie said, pointing to the covered porch. “We can live on one floor here, but the house also is great for entertaining. We’ve had parties with 60-70 people, and it wasn’t crowded.”

This story was originally published October 5, 2020 at 3:53 PM with the headline "Great room and outdoor spaces accommodate a crowd."