Accounting retiree Ritch Bahe of Ashland jokes that he can’t draw a straight line with a ruler. “I’m a doodler,” he said. “I love to draw, but I don’t have the ability to create.” So he was going to need help in designing a distinctive lakefront home on a lot he purchased in Saunders County.

When Ritch and Raette, his wife of 48 years, bought an open lot overlooking Big Sandy Lake, a gravel pit turned reservoir, Ritch invited their daughter-in-law, Lindsey Ellsworth-Bahe, to design the showcase they envisioned. The project was in Lindsey’s wheelhouse. She’s the interior design program director for the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s College of Architecture, where she earned a master’s degree in architecture in 2003.

When Ritch told Lindsey he wanted straight lines, he meant straight lines. A retired CPA and auditor, Ritch prefers things that are continuous and that add up. That’s what Lindsey gave them.

Ritch majored in accounting at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where he also caught and ran the ball for the Huskers under Coach Bob Devaney and Coach Tom Osborne. Ritch scored a 12-yard touchdown run in the 1974 Cotton Bowl, helping give the Huskers their 19-3 victory over the Texas Longhorns.

As he graduated from UNL, the St. Louis Cardinals NFL team drafted him but did not sign him. Ritch liked lines so much he thought about being an athletic field groundskeeper, mowing grass with precision. He stuck with accounting. Now retired, he mows parallel to sidewalks and rakes a symmetrical pattern in his lakefront sand several times a week.

Lindsey designed the 2,700-square-foot lakefront house in a way that would make any accountant happy: a 12-foot grid that could be broken down by fractions of 4 and 8 feet for doors and windows. The front entry materials – cedar, custom porcelain tile and stone – line up inside and out. The tile grout inside isn’t offset but runs a straight line up – a more specialized and demanding choice, because the bottom tiles must bear the weight of those directly above them.

“Once the tilers knew my intention and goals … to create connections between inside and outside, they took pride in their craft to enhance and support the overall effect and the impact this detail could have,” Lindsey said. “It is the same with the cedar wood tongue-and-groove detail and the overhead canopy at the entrance. Without these details I think the overall harmony of the space … the gliding planes wouldn’t have occurred.”

Beyond that, the Bahes gave Lindsey the creative freedom to depart from right angles.

“It was an advantage that Ritch and Raette let me explore” beyond the grid, Lindsey said. “They were open to a nontraditional house.”

 

In her architectural training, Lindsey developed a deep appreciation of American architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s “organic architecture.” Wright’s most famous work, a home in Pennsylvania called Fallingwater, is built over and complements a waterfall. In designing her father-in-law’s home, Lindsey would blend the precise preferences of an accountant with Wright’s theories of connecting inside and outside space in order to celebrate the views, water and sunlight. Ritch had wanted the lakeside home to run north-south; instead, the home is at an angle to allow for extended views of the lake from all interiors rooms of the home, as well as shade from the afternoon sun for the outdoor patio.

The cedar-tile-stone front entrance doesn’t reveal much to visitors. The relatively solid south-facing facade protects the home from solar heat gain, but it does have a long horizontal window that runs the length of the living room. This 24-foot window frames the landscape beyond and celebrates the horizon. Once past the entrance, the interior opens up to expansive views, water and light.

“The entrance sequence is a celebration, a transition from daily work life to coming to retreat and vacation or get away, with a large canopy, a cantilever corner, a narrow, not very deep entrance, and the ability to access the back deck. This sequence becomes an immediate gateway to the view,” Lindsey said. “I was customizing the space for what would occur in it.”

Immediately after entering the home, a visitor can choose between two options: a door immediately on the right that opens to the master bedroom. Turn left through a passageway, and the visitor enters the great room – a spacious combination of living room, TV room, kitchen and dining room. The central roof plane peels up to create a series of clerestories that let in ample sunlight.

The prominent feature is an exposed black I-beam, another straight line and the spine of the home, supporting the second floor without the need for lakeview-obstructing columns or walls. The I-beam allows for the walkway above to appear to float.  Custom steel banisters are threaded with steel cable to further reinforce a sense of lightness when walking on the second floor. The ceiling peels upward, from the west to the east, to welcome in morning light.

The Bahes bought an additional lot for the possibility of expansion and to increase privacy.

“Our lot faces a narrow strip of water, at north end of the development,” Ritch said. “It’s entirely nature off to our north. That’s why we had Lindsey put windows on the north side, where my wife can sit and enjoy the view.”

Big Sandy Lake is a spring-fed, reverse C shaped reservoir formed when Western Sand and Gravel mined gravel for highway construction. The Bahe home is on the southern edge of the top part of the reverse C, facing north. From the Bahe’s deck, the Bahes see a Corps of Engineers dike to the northeast, holding back Platte River floodwaters.

The view north, across the lake, includes a hay field, bales standing guard over the harvest, and a grazing pasture for cattle, studded with wild cedar trees. Cottonwoods host bald and golden eagles in their treetops.

Lindsey added a design element that surprised her father-in-law. When he’s on the lake, he sees the sky reflected in the mirrors installed in the upstairs bedrooms. “It’s as if you can see right through the building,” Ritch said.

Helping with the project was Ritch’s golf buddy, Dave Johnson of the Nebraska firm studio951, recently acquired by Shive-Hattery, headquartered in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Ritch and Dave play at Firethorn Golf Club in Lincoln.

“This project was a very unifying project for the Bahe family,” Johnson said. “The whole family had involvement. It’s probably one of the best houses we’ve ever produced. It’s one of the more complex houses, detail-wise” – including the in-line tile and cantilevered walkway above the great room.

All this was done to enhance a home with the kind of view that Ritch had never taken much time to appreciate growing up and in his career as a CPA and auditor.

“I grew up in Fremont, and not on a farm. My clients were in rural farmland, mainly Sandhills cattle feed lots,” he said. “I was familiar with the country, but never experienced it for myself.”

Originally intended as a vacation home, Ritch and Raette now live in the lakeside house whenever they choose, at least six months a year full time, often sitting on the patio, sheltered from the sun by the home’s 24-foot height and orientation, and hosting their children and grandchildren for the weekend and taking them out on their pontoon boat.

Even with all those right angles, there’s nothing square about their Nebraska lifestyle.