GOLF TOWN GETAWAY

“We looked on and off here for years,” Patterson says, recalling the process. Mike became a member of CCNC years before they bought. From regular trips to play golf, the Pattersons knew they liked the community — and the golf — well enough to buy in. “You can’t get better golf than around here,” she says matter-of-factly.

The neat little farmhouse had been on the market for a while, and in hindsight, Patterson is not sure why they hadn’t considered it sooner. “When we did, I thought, ‘Yeah, this would work,’” she says. “Most of the houses here are traditional homes: formal living room, formal dining room, den, kitchen, breakfast room. We just didn’t need that.” They wanted something more compact.

An entry hall leads into the house, revealing an open living room/dining room/kitchen configuration that flows onto the back porch with the enviable view, birds swooping and soaring over the lake.

The wooden floors came from an old tobacco barn. “The beams, I’m not sure where they got those,” Patterson says, motioning to the rustic wood running intermittently overhead. The couple replaced an old beam fireplace with limestone that counterbalances a burly brick range hood across the way in the kitchen. Earth-toned ceramics from Seagrove potters decorate the counters. The urns are for show, but the serving bowls see plenty of use.

“We got furniture from a mixture of consignment shops and antique shops — I love a deal,” Patterson says. That includes a set of 10 matching dining chairs she’s particularly proud of. “I thought, ‘I cannot get these in my car fast enough.’”

The home reads traditional with a touch of English flair. Staffordshire dog figurines accompany guests in the living room, as does a real-life miniature goldendoodle named Biscuit. Whites and creams warm the space and the rest of the home. In the master bedroom, an off-white four-poster bed and a black and white abstract painting by Raleigh artist Gerry Lynch softly contrast with sea glass-colored walls.

“We made a few little changes to make it our own,” Patterson says about the structure of the house. “And it just works perfectly for us.” They removed a wall to add a bar and transformed the first-floor guest room into a sprawling entertainment space complete with a TV, seating area and a pool table backdropped by a dozen or so old Perrier advertisements featuring golf cartoons. One frame shows a golfer staring down at his ball impossibly and perfectly wedged between the ground and a falling-down fencepost with a caption that reads, “Rule XII: When a ball lies in or touches a hazard, nothing shall be done to improve its lie.”