BATH — At the Mallard home on Teach’s Point, finding a room without a view is impossible — and that’s the way Lou and Henry Mallard planned it.

Poised on the southern edge of the intersection of Bath and Back creeks in Bath, water views abound, which can only be expected, as it was the water and the couple’s love of sailing that drew the Mallards to their new home in Bath.

Now the Mallards’ showcase of a home will be one of 11 homes featured on this year’s Historic Bath Garden Club Homes Tour on April 12.

“Boats are what got us down here, but we just fell in love with the community,” said Lou Mallard. “Everyone has been so receptive. It’s like we’ve lived here 100 years.”

In fact, the Mallards were Bath “weekenders” for many years before Lou Mallard retired from North Carolina Department of Juvenile Justice and they made Bath their permanent home. They purchased their Teach’s Point home and, while it was certainly nice and ideally located, the couple decided to put their own unique stamp on it through massive renovations. Now, the house flows from one room to the next, banks of windows inviting in the view of the creeks at every point.

During renovation, the Mallards added approximately 2,000 square feet to the home, including a roomy kitchen, a foyer, garage and elevator on the first floor. Upstairs, they replaced open loft space over the downstairs living area with a den and expanded the adjacent bedroom.

Expansion required some crafty design-work. Hemmed in on two sides by water and close property lines on the others, Raleigh-based designer Michael Blake Heath, with Washington-based draftsman Jim Bateman, developed the plans that would turn a nice home into an ideal home for the Mallards.

It was a total rework, leading the construction foreman to tell Mallard, “This is the first time I’ve built a house around a house,” she said.

According to Mallard, the only rooms still in their original form and use are a powder room and the two guest rooms and baths, one on the lower level and one on the upper. The rest of the house is either new or repurposed. A spacious dining room exists where a screened in porch was before; the new living area sprawls over the space that was previously the living room, kitchen and dining rooms, all of it lined by windows and French doors leading out to what used to be decks, but are now covered porches.

What makes the end result the perfect home for the Mallards is that it fits: it fits their collection of antiques and art, old framed photographs and duck decoys — a collection the couple has been amassing for the past 30 years, the larger ones now displayed on individual shelves in the upstairs hall; the smaller ones, in shelving in the upstairs den.

“Every time we come upstairs we see them,” Lou Mallard said. “They come from all over, but we really try to buy North Carolina decoys.”

Though Lou Mallard refers to her home as a “work in progress” she said she was pleased to be invited to be part of this year’s homes tour, as it serves as a fundraiser for the garden club’s local efforts: beautifying Bath and some of Bath’s most historic properties.

The Historic Bath Garden Club Homes Tour will be held from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. April 12. Admission is $20 per person or $15 per person for group of 10 or more. The tour will include 11 homes, as well as the historic houses of Bath, and lunch can be purchased that day at United Methodist Church. To purchase tickets, checks may be sent to Historic Bath Garden Club Homes Tour, P.O. Box 21, Bath, NC 27808. Tickets may be picked up at the Historic Bath Visitor Center, N.C. Highway 92 East, on the day of the tour. For more information, call Sallie LaCava, 252-964-3441, or June Wallace, 252-923-3541.