Tag: House

Do Your Homework

Going nowhere and getting it done

By Deborah Salomon • Photographs by John Gessner

Call it quarantine, call it shelter in place, even house arrest. Call it going stir-crazy, looking at the same four walls, weeks on end.

Wait a minute — those walls need painting. Those floors could use a once-over. And how about creating something wild in the kitchen?

See how these residents turned home confinement into home improvement.

Jaime Hoffman

If beauty is only skin deep, the house Jaime and Erik Hoffman purchased in Weymouth desperately needed a dermatologist. Could anything be uglier than cedar shakes painted dark brown, with yellow trim? “Dingy and dated” was Jaime’s assessment. They decided on a radical transformation to white, with blue trim on the paned and bowed windows. Problem was, quotes came in upward of $11,000.

Let’s give it a try, they decided, although neither had ever painted exteriors. This might be just the thing to while away the quarantine, especially since the weather was sunny and warm.

First came two coats of primer, then two coats of paint applied to the rough shakes with a sprayer — another new experience.

But that many window panes and frames would drive even Pete the Painter to drink. With the help of Google and YouTube, Jaime learned that windows could be covered with Frog tape. Even so, she had to open the upstairs windows from the inside and stick her head out to reach the trim.

The job took a week, with Jaime and Erik surviving as friends. Only casualty, their dog, who sat in the paint, necessitating a butt shave.

“Now, our house is bright and happy, like a (Nantucket) cottage,” Jaime beams.

Bright, happy and the talk of the neighborhood. “The best part was that neighbors stopped by and we talked from afar. That way, we got to meet people.”

Susan Clark

Recognizing and implementing trends were part of Susan Clark’s job, when she staged houses in Arizona. Makes sense she would apply this to her own home, recently purchased near Lake Pinehurst, with multiple paneled doors, all white. “Boring . . . ” Clark tried painting them grey. Not quite. “Black seemed like a trend,” part of the popular nouvelle farmhouse style. So she painted the (previously green) front door and all interior doors black. Green floorboards on the porch — equally passé — now sleek black, too.

“Everything in the house is in transition,” Clark admits, which is therapy for quarantined DIYers. Otherwise, Clark would be helping out at the uber-trendy Pine Scones Café in Southern Pines.

Clark didn’t stop at the doors. “I love the beach. We hope to retire there.” Until the time comes, this granny thirsting for salt water created a coastal bathroom more complicated than hanging a starfish over the shower. She liked a shiplap effect: boards, either left natural or painted white, mounted horizontally on the wall. Why go to the trouble and expense when she could draw horizontal lines with a Sharpie? Turned out the marker was less than permanent. Dampness made the lines run like weepy mascara. A contractor-grade marker wasn’t much better. She achieved an acceptable result by painting over the lines with two shades of white, which resemble horizontal boards. Add some industrial shelving, touches of ocean blue, rope glued around a mirror and she can practically hear the gulls strafing the trash can.

Outside, Clark and her grandson planted veggies and watermelon in raised beds.

“These projects made the quarantine more bearable,” she concludes.

Luke, Monica, Tucker, Blair & Andrew Ruszkiewicz

Monica Ruszkiewicz

True, Monica Ruszkiewicz and her husband applied only cosmetic upgrades — no plumbing tasks — to the bathrooms. But their house in the Center South neighborhood of Southern Pines has four. They have three young children, which meant trading off a toddler for a paint brush. Since Ruszkiewicz was working from home as well as homeschooling, most upgrading was done evenings and weekends.

Identifying skills was important, early on. “He’s good with the muscle, I do the finishing work,” Ruszkiewicz says. Not that either has much experience. “We’d never done more than paint walls and install faucets.”

Their three full baths and one powder room needed tougher love. This included spray-painting and relocating light fixtures, sanding/refinishing existing vanities, replacing countertops and covering tile and grout with a magical Rust-Oleum “paint” that seals and freshens. Also creating board-and-batten, shiplap, chair rail, beadboard effects on some walls, papering others — no mean feat for beginners.

They decided to use the same palette in all four bathrooms, for continuity. Makes buying towels easier, too.

The project took about eight weeks to complete. Even before the stay-home order, this military couple had declared 2020 the Year of the Bathrooms. Now, with nowhere to go, “We hunkered down and got it done,” Ruszkiewicz says.

Lesson learned: “People are more skilled than they think. Just roll up your sleeves and get started.”

Joanna Wells

Call her Jo the Ripper.

The Whispering Pines house this military family found — with a big fenced yard for their two breeder Labs, another dog and two children — was OK except for grungy carpet on some floors, engineered hardwood on others. When they found out their stay would be several years they decided to replace the lot.

Joanna Wells opted to rip out the old. Some had been glued down so securely that removal left gaping holes in the subfloor. These had to be patched and sanded.

Ghastly, back-breaking work.

“You owe me big-time,” she told her husband.

They took on the kitchen, dining room, living room and master bedroom while the Labs watched, puzzled, from the deck — for good reason. Penny is expecting puppies soon.

Hardwood was too expensive, so they chose vinyl lock-in plank in a walnut brown — a stunning backdrop to their leather upholstery and patterned rug.

“It really looks cool in here now.”

Wells, who teaches at Sandhills Classical Christian School, was on furlough, since “you can’t do pre-school (from home).” Otherwise, the job might still be waiting.

Encouraged by the results, the couple plans to add a shower to the guest bathroom this summer. Before that, Penny and the pups need a whelping box.

Denise Baker

Everything Denise Baker touches turns to art. For years, she taught and inspired students at Sandhills Community College. Now retired — but not “retiring” — she viewed the spectacular weather during the quarantine as a reprieve from Mother Nature.

“In 42 years I’ve never seen such a beautiful spring,” she says.

So, while others were “going bonkers,” Baker, with helpers, got to work on her ranch house/studio in Whispering Pines, since “all this craziness kept me from focusing on art.”

First, she replaced an ugly, cracked cement walkway with a stone mosaic of her design, more in keeping with the gracious front porch. Then, she added a simple deck accessed by French doors onto the side, where she placed deep royal blue all-weather wicker chairs and patterned rug. Baker had a bookshelf installed over interior French doors leading to a screened porch, and also recovered the cushions. Other door-topping shelves hold pottery.

All this, plus some clean-outs, in just a month. “My goal for the rest of the quarantine is to get the backyard in shape,” Baker says. That will happen after a short reprieve on Pawley’s Island, the perfect antidote to cabin fever, even when the cabin is as creative as Baker’s.

Lindsey, Oakes, Bill, Bode & Sloane Lindquist

Lindsey Lindquist

That noise you hear is Picasso applauding from his grave.

Lindsey Lindquist is an abstract artist with three kids under 6 and assorted livestock in their Weymouth/Southern Pines backyard. Children that age put sticky hands everywhere, including walls. Instead of following them around with a bottle of Fantastik, Lindquist decided to paint a mural on the half wall between the kitchen and the little ones’ craft corner.

The mural not only disguises fingerprints but showcases Mommy’s business — the most recent installation being the children’s glassed-off playroom at remodeled Pinehurst Toyota.

Lindquist calls creating the mural a “stress reliever” during the long days when, if not homebound, the kids would attend Moore Montessori Community School. Otherwise, call it bloomin’ gorgeous, if abstract is your cuppa green tea. Amazingly, she completed the mural in one afternoon, using paint left over from other projects. The kids “helped” paint reachable parts.

“I wanted to make a happy, creative spot,” she says. Also provided, a low craft table found at Habitat.

Lindquist, a Pinecrest graduate, studied painting at Arizona State University. Her ambition: illustrate children’s books. Elsewhere in the house she has channeled Fauvist Henri Matisse. “My husband is super-tolerant of how the house is decorated,” Lindquist admits.

Could Jackson Pollock be a mere splatter away?

Trish Baldwin

Hey, it worked for Tom Sawyer.

“When we moved in there was a garden bench that had been left rotting under a tree,” Trish Baldwin says of their Pinehurst home.

To save or not to save? Baldwin was busy with more important tasks. “Besides, I don’t like sanding.” Her 11-year-old daughter, Reece, seemed interested once the novelty of no school wore off.

“I showed her how to use the sander,” Mom says. Then they rustled up some blue paint to match the front door.

Painting slats is a tedious job — but the pre-teen has a variety of skills. She already sews, cooks from online recipes (cinnamon buns for Mother’s Day) and put together a craft table from hundreds of (Reese’s) pieces.

After sanding, the bench required two coats of paint. A sprayer would have been easier but Trish insisted on using materials at hand.

The result? Something the uppity Plow & Hearth catalog would unload for $300. Plus shipping. Some assembly required.

Kelly Carty

These raised beds are raising eyebrows. Surely, with wood-framed wire fence and gate they are the pride of a master landscaper.

Not exactly. Kelly Carty and her husband, Mark Saurer, are both civil engineers and, more importantly, enthusiastic researchers and planners. For their first home, in Whispering Pines, everything had to be spot-on.

“We found the best materials, how to position beds for the right amount of sunlight,” Carty says. “I’m the planner, he’s the executor.” His execution took only three days, in March.

Carty grew up on a farm, later traveled with the military, putting that all behind her for a recent degree in public policy from Duke.

No technical detail was overlooked. They concocted a proper soil mixture before burying the first seed, which was nourished by homemade compost. When the seedlings appeared, they were covered by a special fabric.

Their first harvest — arugula, Swiss chard, parsley, dill, cukes — is in and will be followed by summer and fall plantings.

“We selected this project because we love to cook, we love fresh vegetables, and nothing beats harvesting them from your own backyard,” she says.

The deer may be stumped but a few aggressive rabbits agree. PS

Branching Out

A dream home comes true

By Deborah Salomon • Photographs by John Koob Gessner

The story of this house starts like many others: Retired executives Linda and Don Branch — well-traveled golfers — fall in love with Moore County, secure a lot in a gated community, build a showplace home, make friends and live happily ever after.

Carefully integrated details set it apart.

Location, location, location: Linda drove through the gates of Forest Creek and said, “I’m done. I feel both elevated and relaxed. Don’t try to sell me on anything else.”

The architecture: faintly chateau, with pinkish bricks resulting from a white frosting, designed by an architect whose “find” was a fluke.

The foyer: a two-story atrium with balcony, adorned by stained glass panels that diffuse and tint sunlight.

The layout: upstairs, a private two-bedroom apartment for golfing guests.

Adaptations: a master kitchen with two cooking triangles bridged by a 14-foot granite island.

Unique: a high-walled private garden with shower protruding from the front — not back or side — façade.

Convenience: a sweet little elevator tucked beside the staircase.

Memorabilia: a piece of the Berlin Wall, Post-it Notes and a Cuban cigar press as décor artifacts. Who else does this?

Last but most unusual: an adjoining lot that they purchased as a habitat for red pileated woodpeckers.

Definitely different, even in an enclave where triple crown moldings and coffered ceilings, waterfall showers, wine caves, media centers and doggie grooming salons are de rigueur.

Linda and Don were ready to retire after 37-year careers with 3M. Living in Brussels, Paris and elsewhere made them crave a subtle European flair played out against minimalist precepts. The ornate retro-green handpainted Asian wallpaper in the dining room, located just beyond the foyer, comes from London; in the same room, a Louis Phillipe breakfront occupies a niche built to accommodate it. The American cherrywood table speaks Shaker simplicity, and plays against the chandelier and heavy tapestry drapes.

First impressions made by the stained glass stylized bird panels set into foyer windows hint at drama within.

Linda explains: “We wanted light but privacy, too, and pieces of color,” provided by the antique hand-blown glass. This feature was so important that architect Bill Hirsch traveled to Minnesota to see how the same panels had been installed in the house where they lived, enabling him to plan their removal and relocation.

How the Branches connected with Hirsch — pure serendipity.

Linda and Don had purchased a lot in Forest Creek for a permanent home rather than do the snowbird commute from Minnesota. They were living in Belgium at the time, making plans. By coincidence, Don found online Designing Your Perfect House, a best-seller by Hirsch. The book was just what they needed to refine their ideas. Lo and behold Hirsch, who has worked all over the world, lives in West End.

Hire that man!

Not only did he understand their goals, but introduced Linda to Agnes Preston-Brame, an artist and interior designer from Budapest who lives in Greensboro. She added the European undertones Linda sought. “I really needed help. Because we’re eclectic I wanted someone to help me pull together what we had (with new purchases).”

The two women stormed the High Point Market, furnishing the entire house in less than a week.

The result is full of surprises.

Just inside the front door is a two-part powder room and, beyond that, the stunning dining room which, along with a passageway through a hall, leads into a mostly white kitchen of magnitude and placement that render it the main-floor hub. Linda and Don, both experienced multi-ethnic cooks, have separate black granite sinks, preparation and storage areas, burners on the range top.

“In our old house we kept stepping over each other,” Linda recalls.

At the end of the kitchen stands a small marble-topped breakfast table. “My grandfather was a pharmacist,” Don says. “This marble was part of the soda fountain (in his store). It gives us a sense of history.”

Remnants from trimming the marble slab were made into trivets.

A half wall separates the palatial kitchen from a seating area which, conforming to a popular trend, replaces a formal living room. Furnishings here are contemporary but not stark, some with Scandinavian lines. This carries forward a long-standing preference.

“Our first house had Stressless recliners,” Don says, of the Norwegian design similar to Eames, conceived in the 1930s. Don insisted on a wood-burning fireplace. Linda agreed, “If he promised to take care of it.”

The covered veranda beyond the kitchen is protected by motorized phantom screens that, at the push of a button, swish down without poles interrupting a view of the pond.

The main floor master suite with seating nook is a slightly more traditional foray in soft retro green (similar to the dining room, which Linda finds restful) flowing around a massive sleigh bed in dark woods. A hallway of closets leads to the bathroom, with a glass-enclosed shower that opens directly into the secret garden enclosing another shower. High walls offer privacy but no barrier to falling leaves and pine needles.

Don and Linda first experienced this bathing arrangement on their honeymoon, in the Virgin Islands. Hirsch had seen something similar in Bali. Other luxury homes have outdoor showers for muddy kids, sweaty golfers and equestrians but not as a bathroom extension, with garden. Its placement allows for Linda or Don, still lathered up, to hear guests arriving at the front door.

Guest apartments, usually second floor or over a free-standing garage, for children and grandchildren, are common features in this echelon of 6,000-plus square foot homes, many built, as was this one, by Will Huntley. Since Linda and Don have neither, they devised The Locker Room: closed-off quarters with two bedrooms (one, a delightfully feminine lavender modifying the clubby masculinity elsewhere), workout equipment, a common room, bathrooms, kitchenette/dining area and, of all things, golf lockers where frequent guests can leave equipment, clothing, toiletries. A few friends have earned a locker nameplate. “We’ve had as many as 100 in a year,” Linda says.

Even Bella, their tiny Papillon mix, has her own gated condo behind the kitchen for mealtime and quiet snoozes.

Although most of their furnishings reflect High Point rather than heirloom, Linda has incorporated personal items, including a painting of herself by a European artist friend, which hangs on the balcony overlooking the atrium-foyer: The scarf she wears in the stylized action portrait is her real-life favorite; the MiniCooper detail reminds her of when a similar car ran over her foot. Across from it hangs Don’s choice, an enlarged Wine Spectator cover by Andy Powell.

Both Don and Linda grew up in less-impressive surroundings, Linda in a split-level ranch, Don in several homes he describes as decidedly middle class. This house fulfills Linda’s requirement for a happy retirement: a beautiful home and time for travel. In February, instead of running away to Florida or the Caribbean, they spent several weeks in Vietnam.

Linda and Don’s longstanding method of selecting and furnishing their homes, including paintings from artists met along the way, worked.

“When we agree on something we just do it,” Linda explains. “So far, all our decisions have been good.” Especially this one, which they call “rightsizing,” since it is slightly larger than their former residence.

Techie Don, after settling a few issues with Electra, agrees. “From the time we married, home and house were very important to us. People who walk in say it’s comfortable. That’s how we planned it, intuitively, to be practical for the way we live.”

His final thought represents the combined efforts of architect, builder and occupants.

“This really is our dream home.” PS

2020 Feature House

Me, Jake and the Lake

Building a dream in Whispering Pines

By Deborah Salomon • Photographs by John Koob Gessner

Lac Enfin.

The sign over the door echoes Leigh Morgan’s sentiment about her new waterfront home:

Finally, the lake

What she might add is c’est moi — meaning inside and out, floorplan, colors and furnishings, this house is me: designed to be lived in by me and Jake, my dog.

The 1,800-square foot cottage in modern farmhouse style, an architectural dernier cri, has only one bedroom, although the loft (now her office) soaring over the living area could be converted.

For sure, with its stark white exterior, black accents and Juliet balcony, Morgan’s lake villa stands apart from its neighbors, built in Whispering Pines ranch-style, circa 1970s.

People walk by, wave and shout, “Nice house!”

Vive la difference.

Now try this one, in English: A change is as good as a rest.

For 30 years Morgan lived quite happily in a charming renovated cottage in the downtown Southern Pines historic district. Her décor: charming renovated cottage-style. Then one morning she woke up and said something like . . . I’m outta here.

“I made an announcement to my family that I was going to sell my house.”

Ah, but why . . . and where would she relocate, they wondered?

“I love the water. I’ve always wanted to live on the water.”

Morgan was familiar with lakeside properties in gated golf communities. No. She wasn’t familiar with Whispering Pines until a business errand took her there. Imagine . . . water, water everywhere. Not only water, but a perfect little building lot on Shadow Lake opposite protected wetlands, assuring forever greenery. She bought the lot a week later, in September 2018. Because a proper “me” house, like a good chocolate cake, must be scratch-made.

Morgan’s business is screen printing logos on T-shirts and promotional material, not drawing plans for a house. Luckily her stepfather, Larry Best, is a retired landscape architect with adjunct skills.

“We had a hurricane that September.” So she, her family and their iPads holed up for two days and designed the shell.

“I picked out everything myself,” Morgan says, beaming with pride. “I read a lot of magazines. So many choices.” Her criteria: “Something I won’t get tired of in five years.”

Once a builder was found, the work went fast. They broke ground in January, moved in by July. “Everything went right. It was a great process,” she says. Even the stark white wide-board exterior doesn’t compete with surrounding nature.

Of course Morgan drove out almost every day, with Jake, to monitor progress.

“He got to know the place gradually,” so the move wasn’t upsetting. Now, Jake has commandeered the Juliet balcony as a snooze spot/lookout.

Inside the black front door, one word says it all.

Magnifique! A 40-foot-long wall of soaring windows, which round the corners at each end, maximizes views of that coveted water. No blinds, no shades, no obstructions. Just a concrete terrace furnished for year-round outdoor cooking and living. Closer to the lake itself, another table for dining.

But what’s that faint whooshing sound?

Immediately inside the front door Morgan positioned an unusual wall-mounted fountain, with a sheet of water falling over a sheet of slate into a narrow trough, where it is sucked upward to fall again. To Morgan, the sound represents serenity.

“When you walk past the fountain it takes negative energy away,” she says. “It’s the first thing I turn to in the morning.”

Except for the bedroom, dressing room and bath, the entire main floor with its 30-foot ceilings is one space with white walls and dark-stained floors, divided only by furnishings. A contemporary sectional sofa the color of beach sand sprawls in front of the fireplace; a more formal settee with carved wood frame, also vanilla, faces the lake. The dining room table, vaguely Parsons, is darkly speckled metal — something she found abandoned in an office. Around it, black-lacquered Windsor chairs, others rawhide-covered; along one side, a bench. Tall bird of paradise and fiddle leaf fig plants help delineate areas.

Abstracts and animal art dominate the walls, splashes of color in this black-and-gray-and-white environment. Morgan is a lifelong horsewoman. Her parents have homes in Southern Pines Horse Country, also in Montana. Animal skin rugs and throws (a steely-eyed badger, perhaps?) come from a veterinarian-pathologist friend who practices taxidermy.

The kitchen borders the great room, suggesting the epithet: Know a woman by her kitchen.

“I’m a minimalist,” Morgan states. Every utensil, every appliance has its place, mostly out of sight. A microwave is not among them. “No, never had one, never liked them,” she says. “I boil water in a kettle.” She chose cabinetry with care to match the living space it is part of: deep charcoal, matte finish instead of hard-edged glossy. Practical white ceramic tile forms the backsplash

A sliding black barn door separates the only bedroom from the great room. On display here, her boldest acquisition: the headboard, a massive, mottled gray metallic panel mounted on a charcoal wall. She found it in a warehouse. “It’s from a tin ceiling,” Morgan explains, with glee. Yet she integrated this and a hulking 9-foot armoire, painted black, with several traditional chests from her grandmother’s house.

The en suite oversized bathroom is splashed with sun beaming through high windows. Half walls protect an integrated shower fitted out with a teak bench, for a Scandinavian effect. Instead of a multi-sink vanity, Morgan chose to place two free-standing ones at opposite sides of the room.

The loft satisfies Whispering Pines’ minimum square footage requirement. Building up was cheaper than building out. Climbing the steep steps is a workout, but once up, the view through the window wall and across the lake is spectacular, even at night, with twinkling lights strung over the veranda. Another requirement, an attached garage, gave her the idea for connecting the two with a mud room.

First-time homebuilders travel a rocky road even when assisted by architects and interior designers. Leigh Morgan, Jake trotting close behind, seems to have avoided the potholes. The only glitch, she laughs, was having the right refrigerator delivered: a stainless steel two-door model (one over one, not side by side) with no exterior ice maker or water dispenser. On the fourth attempt she got what she wanted.

“The whole idea behind this house was to bring the outside in,” Morgan says. “I’m pretty content with life, but this was the icing on the cake, a healing place, calming and peaceful.

“Sometimes I want to pinch myself.”

Jake, an equally mellow fellow, concurs, as he begs a biscuit, then settles down into a faux fur dog blanket spread over the sectional and falls asleep. PS

2020 Feature House

Cabin Fever

Living high on the log

By Deborah Salomon • Photography By John Koob Gessner

Abe Lincoln never slept here. More likely Ralph Lauren, Tom Cruise, Oprah, Clint Eastwood — all of whom own palatial log homes. Yet Les Holden’s modest but well-appointed cabin retains that rough-hewn aura conveyed by colors, surfaces and memorabilia.

Since it’s not a kit cabin, the layout can be unpredictable. Furthermore, manicured grass, tall hollies and a bubbling fountain overlooking Hyland Golf Club elevate this cabin over the Shaw House compound or anything attributed to Malcolm Blue.

Sealing the deal, the five-bay garage/workshop shelters five Brass Era (circa 1900) cars Holden has restored to drivable glory. Like King Tut’s sarcophagus, they are historic objects d’art enhanced by his knowledge of their provenance and mechanics.

Holden lovingly strokes the bumper of one, then gestures toward the cabin: “This (car) is more valuable than my whole property.”

Holden caught cabin fever growing up in frigid North Dakota, where his father was a ranch manager, then a feed salesman. He pulls out a black and white photo taken of his family, mid-1950s, in front of a hardscrabble log dwelling as unrelated to his own as Willie Nelson is to Perry Como. Before that, they lived in what Holden calls a “basement house on the poor side of the tracks.” The log cabin had been abandoned. Yet Holden remembers being happy there, especially at Christmas, when a freshly cut tree was illuminated by real candles.

Holden discovered Moore County in the 1970s while serving in the 82nd Airborne Division. “I married the ‘farmer’s daughter’ at Fort Bragg.”

After discharge he did well in real estate and mortgage lending, soon establishing his own company and bringing up a family in a large, formal residence. “We used to drive to Pinehurst often in the late ’80s. You could see the cabin clearly (from U.S. 1).” Intrigued by the elongated garage, he stopped.

“I’ve admired your cabin for a long time. Is it a kit?” he asked the owner. No. The pine logs cut from this very lot are joined with 3000 PSI (pressure per square inch) concrete. Interior/exterior wall maintenance is minimal, although retrofitting for wiring and ductwork, if necessary, can be challenging. The floorplan was tight but sufficient.

They spoke for a while; coincidentally, the owner was planning to sell. Holden had vowed to retire at 39. The modest size (just under 1,800 square feet) was perfect, since his daughters were grown.

He struck a deal with the owner in 1993. The Holdens would sell their fancy furniture, prowl for country antiques, landscape the grounds (including a tall privacy hedge), and adopt a more relaxed lifestyle.

On the day Holden retired, his wife was diagnosed with a brain tumor.

“I lost my ambition for making money. There were other things I wanted to do with my life, including taking care of my wife.”

She died soon after. Holden eventually married a family friend, who died of cancer in 2019.

His log cabin houses memories of both — a showplace minus the glitter. Instead, his concept uses forest hues and materials: A brick fireplace was replaced by stone. Tree bark was cut, flattened and fitted as paneling and window valances. Faux-painted walls also resemble bark. An antler chandelier joins mounted bear and mule deer heads. Colors throughout blend browns with greens, an occasional deep red against leather upholstery.

Antique wooden ice boxes and kitchen “safes” arrived via grandparents. Patterned rugs brighten the knotty pine floorboards.

Except for the upstairs master suite with pale wall-to-wall carpet and unobstructed windows, the house is dark, a result of first-floor windows opening onto a covered porch across the front and a screened porch at the rear, both done in rocking chairs and Amish twig furnishings. Holden installed skylights in the kitchen’s vaulted ceiling, all the better to illuminate this unusual room, which combines distressed painted wood cabinetry with an electromagnetic cooktop that creates heat inside metal pots. The island is built from architectural salvage components. Italian granite countertops add an unusual wavy design in gray-green. A massive schoolmaster’s desk fills one corner. Holden is proud of finding matching antique Windsor stick-back chairs, painted black, for the long table within the kitchen dining area.

One risky departure from the cabin motif: a contemporary staircase installed against a wall, with no railing on the open side.

Holden seems most pleased with details, the small artifacts serving as wall decor, like a spice rack with tiny drawers. Or a child’s sleigh from Vermont. Or a portrait of somebody’s grumpy ancestor, whose eyes seem to follow the beholder. His high-tech thermostat hides behind a weathered mailbox. A flintlock rifle circa 1820 hangs over a door, and a framed Confederate war bond occupies the stairwell.

“What do you think this is?”

From the aubergine walls of his upstairs office hang framed documents dated 1773 concerning property deeds and mortgage transactions bearing X signatures, also a painting he purchased at Harrods, the London emporium catering to royalty.

Early American life is represented by “possibles” bags hanging from a hall tree — utility cross-body carry-alls used by hunters and frontiersmen, which could, possibly, contain anything.

“I tried to keep (the cabin) as authentic as I could.” Otherwise, Holden filled in with reproductions from North Carolina artist/designer Bob Timberlake’s furniture collection.

Nothing in this highly personal cabin even comes close to what awaits in the garage, which was a major selling point for Holden. He enlarged it to 1,900 square feet, larger than the cabin, installed heat and AC but, as yet, no plumbing. Obviously, the garage is his happy place — a spotless showroom, what the Louvre is to Mona Lisa.

Holden is a familiar name among this rarified group of collectors. His 1904 Cadillac touring car took first prize in the Brass Era (1895-1915) category at the 2013 Concours d’Elegance in Pinehurst. This and his other four open cars (one seats seven) defy description, particularly since he restored the motors and bodies himself. Occasionally, he’ll take one for a spin around Southern Pines. Imagine the reaction.

As for the cabin, after living there for 27 years, Holden still calls it a work in progress. “It’s like living in a vacation home,” he says, then relates this anecdote, with pride:

Some time ago, the cabin was on a home tour. Since homeowners must disappear for the day, Holden chose to peruse other participants. “I overheard two women discussing the elaborate houses they had already visited.”

“Just wait until you see the cabin!” one exclaimed.

The difference? It’s different. PS

2020 Feature House

A Leap of Faith

Or, how to buy a white elephant, inside unseen

By Deborah Salomon • Photographs by John Koob Gessner

It takes a village to support a castle. But castles are so . . . yesteryear. Most have become tourist attractions or TV locations. Duncraig Manor and Gardens isn’t exactly Downton Abbey, although rather grand for Southern Pines village, circa 1920s, when moneyed Northerners flocked to outdo each other residentially in the newly chic winter enclave.

A pair of these, Quaker Oats heiress Mrs. J.H. Andrews and her daughter Helen Lohman, hired Alfred Yeomans, the nephew of James Boyd, who was to architectural/landscape design what Chanel and Patou were to couture. This would be a huge jewel in Yeomans’ crown.

Except the homestead differed from the Georgian, Federalist, Victorian, New England saltbox, Arts and Crafts and other architectural styles dominating Weymouth. Later named Duncraig by subsequent owner Dr. George Matheson, who had ties to the Scottish Duncraig Castle built in 1866, this was more lodge than castle, executed with a whiff of Tudor, suitable for a newly minted English lord with eight children wanting sprawling summer digs in hunt country. Duncraig has nine bedrooms, 10 bathrooms, a servants’ wing, a quasi-commercial kitchen, finished basement, spa, a garden tea house, groundskeeper’s apartment over the garage, even a nook in the dining room equipped for serving a buffet.

Total: 12,680 square feet . . . and counting.

At completion in 1930, it’s safe to assume Duncraig made a big splash on the bend of Connecticut Avenue.

These days, only a business could justify such space.

The first business was a group home for emotionally disturbed children, operated by Constance Baker. That use did not please neighbors; the home closed in the 1990s. The property, a maintenance money pit, deteriorated as it passed hands.

Caroline and Donald Naysmith are in the business of restoring threadbare mansions as B&B/event venues. Their previous projects — now on the Register of Historic Places — took them to Colorado, Missouri, New York state and Charlotte. Their children operate several.

The Naysmiths have seven children and 30 grandchildren (including three great-grandchildren), so Duncraig works well on holidays.

But nobody calls it rustic or even family style. Beginning with an Italianate fountain installed by a son-in-law in the walled courtyard, continuing with heavy formal furnishings upholstered in dark brocades on the main floor with lighter, brighter hues upstairs, this B&B suits ghosts seeking retro opulence. Ghosts who expect a lily pond, swimming pool, kennels for the hounds, and formal gardens spreading over nearly 5 acres.

On first approach, Duncraig appears the stretch limo of Southern Pines showplaces, somewhat reminiscent of Loblolly, also faintly Tudor with stucco exterior designed for a Boyd relative by Amar Embury II in 1918.

Might Mrs. Andrews and her daughter have been in competitive mode a decade later?

The Naysmiths discovered Duncraig while in town for a musical event; Donald sings gospel and classical. For Caroline, it was love at first sight. She had Don stop the car so she could ring the doorbell, see what was what.

She never got inside. Her reaction, nevertheless: “This house needed me.”

They purchased the property in 2017.

“We are people of faith,” Don said. “We made it a matter of prayer.” Also a matter of money, since the 18-month restoration cost in the low seven figures.

Where to start a tour? The sunken “salon,” aptly named since a room comfortably housing a baby grand piano and an even longer harpsichord exceeds either living room or parlor. Its walls, like those throughout the house, are textured plaster with unusual rounded corners. Some were wallpapered in brocade which, when removed, revealed mold. The gleaming pegged floors are mostly stained. Dark, heavy beams bisect the ceiling. Here, around a massive coffee table, guests gather evenings for wine and hors d’oeuvres before heading out to dinner.

The Naysmiths found furnishings and paintings hither and yon, mostly from dealers in North and South Carolina. For these forays, they attach a trailer to the car and bring it back loaded. No auctions, which are too time-consuming, Caroline says. “We love period antiques of the ’20s and ’30s, when the house was built.” In the salon, this includes throne-sized armchairs in royal purple, an inlaid Asian highboy, both authentic and reproduction Tiffany lamps. Caroline made the drapes covering paned casement windows here and throughout “while I was waiting for the rest to be done.”

Adjoining the salon, a game room/library with burgundy walls offers not only chess and books, but a snarling bear rug.

Watch where you step.

Don relates the story of the dining room table, which looks folksy considering the ornate chairs. He found a fallen cherry tree in the Adirondacks, had the trunk milled into 10-foot lengths and kiln dried with the planks joined into an 11-foot table top set on carved pedestals.

A small (but obligatory for the era) butler’s pantry leads into a mammoth kitchen more utilitarian than magazine, with ceramic tile backsplashes, a square island and a Blue Star gas range tucked into a niche — perfect equipment for a wedding caterer but a bit much for the Naysmiths, who as concierges are required by law to live on the premises.

Main floor rooms are joined by hallways; in one hangs a collection of cow bells. Other collections include Royal Doulton historic character mugs and antique chamber pots.

The front hallway running the length of the house must be longer than a bowling lane.

Each of the guest rooms is named and furnished after places the Naysmiths have visited, including Nagamo, Vienna, Jamaica, Charleston, Budapest. Perhaps the most charming are smaller bedchambers in the servants’ wing, each with a tiny vanity sink.

Bathrooms have been modernized only when necessary, otherwise leaving tiles and fixtures intact, adding to the authenticity. Some have extra-long soaking tubs.

The terraces and gardens, beginning with the front courtyard and, in the rear, stretching on all sides as far as the eye can see, only enhance the estate atmosphere.

However, from a business angle this home-away-from-home for guests trading up isn’t quite what the Naysmiths planned. The B&B and Airbnb worked out, but town regulations limit them to serving only breakfast, not luncheon meetings or dinners. Duncraig is allowed to host only 20 events per year.

Now that the restoration is complete, guests are treated to a glimpse of life between the Gilded Age of the late 1800s and the Great Depression beginning in 1929 — a time when the wealthy and arts-minded mingled over golf in Pinehurst and horses in Southern Pines. A time when, historians suggest, fine tradesmen were lured to North Carolina to build Biltmore House in Asheville, and stayed on to adorn mansions throughout the state.

However, according to Donald Naysmith’s beliefs, things are just things and a house, even Duncraig Manor, is a temporary dwelling:

“It’s what is beyond that matters,” he states with conviction. “We have no permanent home down here. That is our guiding principle.” PS

2020 Feature House

A Piece of Work

Fox Hollow — like a posh resort in the country

By Deborah Salomon • Photography by John Koob Gessner

Through the brick posts and iron gates, down the long and winding drive, past the pond stocked with large-mouth bass, the waterfall, pasture, putting green, guest house into the courtyard where a white Italian sports car stands in front of a house with enough wings to take flight, formed from ancient bricks and stones — Fox Hollow Farm answers best to a single word:

Ahhh . . .

Words two through five: Peaceful. Green. Luxurious. Perfect.

“Living here is like living at a resort,” says Mike Martone, who lives at Fox Hollow when not in residence at alternate homes in Banner Elk, North Carolina, and Naples, Florida.

Likely a golf resort, given the hundreds of golf awards, crystal trophies and memorabilia on display throughout the house. Equally an equestrian retreat filled with hunting art, medals and statuary.

“Horses and golf, that’s what attracted us,” Martone says of the estate he purchased deep in Southern Pines horse country, in 2002. He recalls his daughter as a little girl, coaxing her pony into the shallow pond.

However, the house at Fox Hollow wasn’t always resort-quality.

This tract originated as a gristmill, one of only two in southeastern Moore County, operated by a Mr. Buchan. A drawing archived at the Moore County Historical Association shows Buchan’s home made of pine boards, while a map dates it from the 1780s. Still standing is the stone well house; Martone found matching stones in Virginia to face renovations to a wing, also the garage with adjoining workout room. For a project undertaken by a previous owner, weathered bricks were imported from Italy.

As a whole, the house exudes the aura of sporting gentry, despite the rough-hewn front door thought to be from the original cabin.

In the early 20th century Southern Pines developed as a winter haven for wealthy Northern equestrians. “Horse country,” between Young’s Road and Connecticut Avenue, gained panache when the Firestone tire family built an estate on Old Mail Road, as mentioned in the 1994 New York Times obituary for Raymond Firestone, son of founder Harvey. Fox Hollow, originally 35 acres, now about 10, changed hands, submitting to several adaptations before Sam Morton — son of Master of the Hounds Tom Morton — grew up there, from 1961 to 1983. “Before the Firestones it was just woods,” Morton says. “There used to be a tennis court with grandstands” in addition to the spring-fed swimming pool and copper gutters, worth a fortune, that young Sam Morton once cleaned. Mostly, the house was party central for his brother’s college classmates, a departure from the “pink” hunting coats and high leather boots scene. “The whole fraternity came down from N.C. State . . . they slept on the floors, everywhere. There were bodies all over the carriage house.”

Living room rugs were reserved for girls.

Watch out for the snakes — everywhere. “I remember a water moccasin that swam across the pool and up the rocks on the waterfall,” Morton says. He also recalls the queen of Thailand, visiting a college classmate who lived in Pinehurst, came to lunch, but Morton’s mother banished her unruly son, so they never met.

And those are just Sam’s tamer stories.

“I was an outlaw in those days,” he says, fondly. “We put a lot of energy into that house.”

The Martone iteration is calmer, richer, more dignified. The house juts out in half a dozen directions, creating several living/sitting/TV rooms, a large but simple kitchen with breakfast room, medium-sized dining room, many bay windows with upholstered seats for enjoying the views. Some floors are an imported wormy chestnut instead of native heart pine. One bedroom overlooks the waterfall composed of descending stone steps, guaranteeing a babbling lullaby.

A baby grand piano fits perfectly into a nook in the central living room.

“My wife had a dream that our daughter would be a concert pianist,” Martone says. The dream fizzled but the piano still graces the space. Instead of music awards, her room was plastered with blue ribbons from equestrian events.

Dark woods predominate in paneling, floors, beams, rafters; formal furnishings blend into this background. Primary colors are passed over for pale and dark leather, animal skin rugs and printed fabrics of yesteryear, continued in Martone’s study/office with deep green walls.

Definitely single malt territory.

The master bedroom stands as one of several exceptions, with a fanciful wrought iron bed, white linens and narrow beams accentuating a raised ceiling. Light streams through window walls surrounding its seating area dominated by a frilly double-wide chaise longue. Instead of polished cherry or mahogany, the dining room tabletop is inch-thick plate glass with beveled edge, suggesting Art Deco, but crystal chandeliers channel The Phantom of the Opera.

Souvenirs recall worldwide travel, particularly China and India. Martone, now retired, was CEO of a data processing company employing 50,000 in 120 countries.

Formal and traditional, yes, but Martone demands comfort and livability

“I was one of six kids; we grew up in a modest house in Rochester, New York. I converted a small laundry room into a bedroom, or else I’d have to share with my brother.” Martone insisted on heated floors and towel bars in the remodeled bathrooms. “I wanted everything in the house to be used, to be enjoyed.” That includes upholstered pieces unlike his grandmother’s house, where “the furniture was covered with plastic. You’d stick on it when you sat down.”

Every morning, after working out in his fitness studio, Martone sits on his screened porch overlooking the pond and terrace with massive stone fireplace, drinking coffee, watching blue heron fish for their breakfast, enjoying the camellias and azaleas he planted.

More than a home, like a fine suit, Fox Hollow Farm is tailored to the pleasure of its inhabitant.

“You can’t live here without thinking what a special house and environment this is,” Martone concludes, then adds, “Even better than some resorts.”

Ah . . . PS

2019 Feature House

Story of a House

Minding Their Manors

Retirees resurrect Walter Hines Page residence

By Deborah Salomon • Photographs By John Koob Gessner

Twenty years ago, Dr. Russell and Ann McAllister decided to downsize from a 4,000- square-foot home in Durham. Their children were grown. Russell, a cardiologist, anticipated retirement. Golf wasn’t a factor. So what did they do? Purchase an empty and neglected 6,000-square-foot manor house on 5 acres with two tennis courts and a 20-by-40-foot pool, built in Pinehurst, circa 1916, for U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Walter Hines Page.

Page, appointed by Woodrow Wilson, served during World War I. His father, Francis Page, had made a fortune in logging and construction. The elder Page is credited with founding Cary and Aberdeen. Son Walter, who followed more intellectual pursuits (journalism, teaching, publishing), shifted his attention and residence to England, planning to return, eventually, as a gentleman farmer. Illness brought him back to Pinehurst, where died in 1918, at 63, without fully occupying the stately residence called Garran Hall.

The McAllisters’ acquisition of the Georgian manor, renamed Hollycrest, spins an unlikely tale.

Ann: “A friend asked me to come down from Chapel Hill with her to help find a house in the Sandhills. We looked through some brochures.” One caught Ann’s eye. The agent offered a showing. “It had been vacant for 16 years. As we came up the drive it looked like a haunted nursing home.”

By chance, the house was open. They tiptoed in.

(Roll the spooky music.)

“I had a moment,” Ann recalls. She saw beyond the cobwebs to the grounds, the scope and isolation. “I adore magnolias,” which were plentiful. She faces challenges without fear.

Russell: “I was at choir practice when Ann called to say she had found what she always wanted. And all those years I thought (that something) was me.” Instead, a brick masterpiece, simple and dignified, built longitudinally one room deep, with a wing at each end.

This faded beauty oozed potential. Ann possessed expertise; she had renovated a historic home in Kentucky, also trained as a docent at The Hermitage, President Andrew Jackson’s residence in Nashville, Tennessee.

Nevertheless, Russell — also a history buff — came down, took one look and uttered, tapping his forehead, “She needs help.”

She got the practical kind from the architect who designed their Durham home. But interiors executed in a genteel Southern mode are Ann’s alone.

Once termite damage had been rectified and the skeleton exposed, the crew got to work on making the house 21st century livable: Enlarge the main floor master suite and bathrooms, create a kitchen (original in the basement, which now houses a wine cellar), install new systems (five-zone AC), add two staircases and enough paneling, coffers and moldings that, if laid end to end, would reach W.H. Page’s grave in Aberdeen.

They were able to save all seven carved mantels, most doors and some oak flooring, which was lifted, repaired and relaid. Workmen ran into trouble when replacing the front portico, deemed wrong for the era. During its removal, bricks fell off the house front. The hunt for matching ones took three months.

The blush pink salon — nearly 40 feet long, with tall bare windows parading down both sides — remained intact, divided into conversation areas by white sofas, chairs, rugs and tables. One end is anchored by a fireplace, the other by a 15th century millefleurs tapestry reproduction, where the background is composed of tiny flowers.

Given the dimensions, Russell envisioned it a ballroom.

“We love to dance.”

Less imposing on a quiet evening are several sitting rooms, including one adjacent to the kitchen, also Ann’s Blue Room displaying her Delft collections, notably tiles framing the fireplace. Part of Russell’s second-floor office doubles as the TV room. Her favorite is the library just off the kitchen, where a round ottoman upholstered in a fabric featuring life-sized cats dominates floorspace.

“Playfulness,” Ann calls it. “Every room needs a laugh.”

Laughing from the top of a highboy is her collection of nutcrackers brought back from a year in Switzerland. Russell identifies the odd painted wooden benches on the veranda and by the front door as joggling boards, a low country craft.

“This is where you sit with your girlfriend and ‘joggle’ closer and closer.”

How refreshing to see serious antiques placed beside a cat fabric and pig-shaped leather footstool. In the foyer Ann again accomplished this with her mother-in-law’s Governor Winthrop-style desk a few feet from a low rack draped with a velvet jester’s cap, a French gendarme’s hat and assorted headgear collected on their travels.

Ann’s fabric/wallpaper preferences lean toward chinoiserie patterns with flowers and birds of paradise, popular in Europe when Asian trade routes opened during the 17th century. Some have a silky sheen. Her method: Haunt fine fabric shops in Charleston, Atlanta and Durham, purveyors of brands like Scalamandre and Brunschwig & Fils, for finds and bargains. When something catches her eye, “I buy it, a lot, and build the room around it.”

The gap between purchase and use can be years. Other times, the fabric completes a theme, as in the upstairs nursery. Here, a medieval tone is set by a brass canopied crib, fit for a prince, first used by the McAllister children, now by the grandchildren.

Ann attributes recurring Asian themes, notably lamps, to time their son spent at the University of Beijing.

Furniture wasn’t a problem. Russell descends from an old Virginia family, Ann from a Tennessee counterpart. Heirlooms aplenty trickled down, including a Biedermeier chest, many desks, side tables, campaign and other chairs, a bachelor’s chest, armoires, classic dining room pieces and, of course, ancestral portraits: Russell’s kin, a handsome assistant surgeon general of the Confederate Army, shares a wall with his stern-looking wife. “When you have enough relatives who die on both sides you can pull it together,” Ann learned.

Her kitchen, created from scratch, pushes the envelope in another direction. The toile wallpaper in giant black-on-white figures suggests a formality not reflected in matte black granite countertops, preferred for their well-worn look. The low storage island doubles as a dinette table, and two farm sinks (one in an open butler’s pantry) help when the McAllisters entertain. The wall of windows over the main sink faces an expanse of grass bordered by elder magnolias and American plane trees, with pool and tennis courts beyond.

“Every morning at 6:30 I look out and see a deer herd go by,” Ann says.

Indeed, Hollycrest qualifies as lodging for royalty. Elizabeth Demaine, who purchased the property in the 1940s, hosted the Queen of Thailand, a college friend, and her entourage there. Demaine, a foxhunter, changed the name to Hollycrest, adding stables and kennels — even an enclosure for peacocks, known to be guard birds.

Demaine’s favorite horse is buried on the property.

All things considered, the beauty of Hollycrest lies in the sum of its details: the old-fashioned robin’s egg blue and barely pink downstairs walls contrasting to dark, vivid teal and red upstairs, accomplished by first painting the surface black, then overlaying color. The Tennessee marble used for a powder room vanity. The original polished brass hinges and doorknobs. A narrow spiral staircase. Brick gateposts and a circular drive to match house proportions. Art purchased worldwide just because the collectors liked it. A secret coat closet, under the main staircase. A collection of tiny Hummel figurines. The handpainted folding screen in the dining room. Shelves of Southern literature and gardening books in Ann’s sitting room. A tiny refrigerator built into Russell’s office bookcase, containing his favorite beverages and the grandchildren’s.

Lucky grandchildren. Ann and Russell located a furnished “wee cottage” just tall enough to accommodate grade-schoolers. They arranged for its transportation, in toto, by sky crane, then secured it with a foundation.

Alice found no match in Wonderland.

Next up, lighting the tennis courts so the McAllister’s daughter, who played for Princeton University, can teach her children.

What Ambassador Walter Hines Page started others have continued in a style both innovative and respectful of times when people paid calls, wrote thank-you notes and took Sunday drives. As its current chatelaine Ann McAllister realizes, even greater potential as a family homestead.

“This house needs three or four kids running around. I have tried to preserve it for someone down the path, a continuing challenge.” PS

2019 Feature House

Art Here, Art There, Art Everywhere

A cozy family home doubles as a gallery for animal behaviorist

By Deborah Salomon • Photographs By John Koob Gessner

A sandy, rutted, quarter-mile driveway off Pee Dee Road ends at a white clapboard house with enough wings to take flight. Its front yard is a grass pasture sized for soccer, or football, or equestrian trials. Somewhere on the 150-acre estate are remnants of a tennis court. Yet the exterior suggests a family home, more comfy than pretentious, despite its 6,000-square-foot interior.

The sign by the front porch reads Whitehall — not for London’s government center, but because the man who built it during the development of Knollwood in the 1920s was named White, or Whitehouse.

One legend has this wealthy New Yorker losing his fortune in the 1929 stock market crash — and committing suicide.

Lacking a documented pedigree, Whitehall speaks for itself through Dr. Barbara Sherman — veterinarian, author, respected animal behavioral specialist, clinical professor at N.C. State College of Veterinary Medicine — who has occupied the house for 20 years.

From the outset, Sherman saw it as more than a sprawling residence offering both beauty and privacy. “The light, the bay windows and curved walls, the moldings, the space” suggested a gallery. She is a connoisseur and collector of sculpture, pieces displayed on pedestals acquired during travels to galleries and showings, preferably where the artist is present.

“I am intrigued and often moved by artistic expression — not sure why, but some contemporary art speaks to me,” she says. “I feel pleasure living with it and by purchasing it, supporting the artists, learning how they found their way.”

Understandable, since “my parents collected sculpture.”

Her involvement, more likely passion, begins with the sculpture outside the front door, which she describes as an ocean stone rounded by the sand and inexorable movement of the sea, with contrasting sharp lines of the artist’s cut and the potent symbolism of the center circle, all mounted on a steel base.

“It almost seemed an altar to the miracle of nature.”

Once inside, Sherman lovingly strokes a ceramic elephant fossil displayed in the small sitting room off a foyer where a wall-mounted metal torso flanks the front door.

Now, first-time visitors know what lies beyond.

The house, purchased from the Drexel family, was once a hub for the six Drexel children and their friends. To accommodate the crowd, in addition to a huge living room, the Drexels added an even larger family room, where over the fireplace hangs a piece of geometric fiber art designed by Alexander Calder.

David Drexel was a popular Boy Scoutmaster who held events at Whitehall, recalled fondly by Scout Bob Ganis: “We would walk from Whitehall to a small pond in the woods to swim. That pond still exists as a water feature at Talamore golf course.”

Daughter Tina (Drexel) Adams remembers raising chickens and pigs: “I used to ride along in Dad’s truck delivering eggs.” She also recalls giving birth to her middle daughter there.

Sherman spent a year renovating without altering Whitehall’s character or floor plan. The rooms, like a maze, connect with each other rather than radiating from a hallway. A garage and screen porch were added, where Sherman sits and watches red-tailed hawks and deer. Original heart pine floors were refinished but not stained. Cherry cabinetry in the new kitchen channels the Arts and Crafts period. Even here a pedestal supporting a buffalo sculpture fronts a bare window, while another flat piece hangs over the sink. Large abstract paintings and landscapes, one by Evelyn Dempsey, decorate the passageway from kitchen to family dining room, delineated by an Oriental rug, one of dozens throughout the house.

The renovation included skylights and all systems, but not bathrooms tiled in that 1950s froggy green rarely seen since. “Look at the tiles, the workmanship,” Sherman says. “Before they came (in sheets), each tile was laid individually.”

Of all Whitehall’s randomly situated rooms, one stands out. Located just beyond the small sitting room, this might have been a sunroom, with tall windows on three sides and the arched ceiling. Aside from several pedestals and a carpet, its only occupant is a jointed life-sized wooden block figure reclining on the floor, titled The Pine Man, which Sherman found in Cleveland.

When art comes first, integrating furnishings can be tricky. Sherman respected no boundaries. “My mother was an interior designer” who contributed many exquisite European pieces, including an inlaid dining table, lovely enough to leave bare when in use. Just as impressive, several burled highboys and a glass-front cabinet displaying a collection of about 40 fine china demitasse cups, some rimmed in gold. They belonged to Sherman’s grandmother, who lived in Greensboro.

“Do I look like a demitasse person?” Sherman smiles, wryly.

The showpiece, however, is a table piano dated 1791 made by Sebastien Erard, an 18th century French instrument crafter who received commissions from Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. According to a music history, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Verdi, Wagner and Mendelssohn also owned Erard pianos.

For the rest, Sherman chose plain, stocky tables, sandy-neutral leather chairs and upholstered sofas that do not draw attention away from the art and antiques. “Simple, handcrafted, esthetic” were her requirements.

For years Sherman drove almost daily to Raleigh. Once home, Whitehall fulfilled her need for nature. “I love being in the woods and observing the natural world around me.” This fulfillment has been shared with the public since David Drexel approached the newly formed Sandhills Area Land Trust (SALT) to establish a conservation easement. Therefore, the Whitehall Trail, a 2-mile loop and 57 acres surrounding it, will be reserved for public use forever. The rough, often leaf-covered trail is open to walkers (with or without dogs), joggers and cyclists, but not horses.

Sherman’s daughter is grown and gone. Since retirement, she and scruffy rescue terrier Jasper don’t need 6,000 square feet on 150 acres. They are moving closer to the horses she loves and understands, and a human community of the like-minded. Perhaps Whitehall will find new purpose as a proper gallery, or an organization’s performance/educational/arts space, she muses.

“Life has changed. I want to divest myself of so many material things, have less to be responsible for, live at a different rhythm.” This applies to mowing the pasture on a ride-on, but not to her collections.

“It is remarkable that people can create such things,” she says. “I will always want to be surrounded by art and nature.” PS

2019 Feature House

Starting Over

A new look for a couple . . . and a neighborhood

By Deborah Salomon • Photographs by Amy Freeman & John Koob Gessner

Old Town Pinehurst suggests cottages — likely sizable vacation homes — built in the early 1900s, first by James Tufts, then by wealthy Northeastern families eager to populate the newly chic golf resort. Those still standing have been restored and modernized to the nines. Most are furnished in antiques, Persian rugs, period pieces, family portraits, golf or equestrian art. Behind every armoire door and over every carved mantel hangs the latest in flat-screen technology.

When the cottages ran out, people who desired strolling distance to the village began buying land and building. Some new construction followed classic styles. Other homes veered afar, like an asymmetrical front with interior half-story facilitating a balcony overlooking the family room; an intimate living room with four armchairs around a low table but not much else; and a breezeway into a mud wing with direct access to the rear deck and gardens so guests on their way to the (not yet built) pool or cookout would avoid traipsing through the house.

New ideas, indeed, just what Elizabeth “Cissy” Beckert and her husband, Bruce, wanted. So new that when they found this house built in 2007 they decided to purge their furniture circa big-dogs-sleeping-on-the-couch and start fresh.

“It’s something Cissy always wanted to do,” Bruce says.

What fun for a couple who had worked in the High Point furniture industry. They hired designer/friend Leslie Moore, whose motto is “perfectly imperfect,” and, after Market closed, walked through the showrooms selecting pieces that fleshed out their ideas. Many came from Hickory Chair, a century-old North Carolina furniture manufacturer that still crafts 90 percent of its products in-state.

The Beckerts’ purpose was born far, far away.

“Six years ago we took the family to Puako, Hawaii, and stayed in a VRBO on the Maui Channel,” Cissy begins. “We loved how the house allowed the outside to come in — every window framed a view. We returned to Pinehurst wanting to find a home with the same feel except instead of the ocean, the views would be magnificent magnolias, gardenias, hydrangeas, daylilies and Carolina jasmine.”

To illustrate, Cissy points to a tall, paned powder room window draped on the outside with jasmine vines resembling a drawn-back curtain.

The house they found had been designed sans cookie cutter. It required no structural changes. High ceilings throughout are delineated by simple, elegant crown moldings. The unusual floorplan (four bedrooms, six bathrooms and an attached garage tucked around back, accessed by an alley) suited their purposes: children grown and gone who visit occasionally. Now Cissy could select rugs and furniture to fit room dimensions.

Bruce reacted immediately. “As soon as I walked in the door I said, ‘I can live here.’”

The foyer opens into a longitudinal layout featuring a spacious open core encompassing kitchen, vaulted family room with skylights, and a dinette devoid of table and chairs.

“We eat at the bar or (for events like Thanksgiving) in the dining room,” maybe outside under a vine-covered pergola, Bruce says. He repurposed the dinette as a plant gallery — tall ones, in attractive ceramic pots, with matching rug.

“We’re outdoors people,” Bruce continues. “I like plants — they scrub the air.”

But wait: Outdoors, especially Hawaiian, means sun-splashed color. Yet beyond the handsome arched front door the walls and many furnishings hum Zen gray.

“I shy away from bright colors that assault the eye,” Cissy explains. “Gray is peaceful.” Then, thinking deeper, “I was the middle child. Gray is between black and white.” She tempers the gray with several shades of blue, mostly in fabrics: “A blue sky mesmerizes me, especially the turquoise from New Mexico.”

About that tiny monochromatic living room: “We have our morning coffee there,” Cissy says. Or sit with a few friends, sipping wine by the fire. Contemporary architecture often shrinks this traditional gathering place, adding space elsewhere. The dining room is also smallish, intimate, and gray, which suits Cissy.

“When we close the curtains we’re enveloped. I’m a high energy person. This calms me down.”

However, tall ceilings suggest a spaciousness that allows large pieces, like the massive bed of dark woods in the master bedroom — the only piece retained from their previous home. Here, minimalism rules. No clutter, just a few pieces with clean lines to foil the decorative bed frame.

“Don’t be fooled; I like sturdy furniture,” Cissy says, pointing to a heavy rustic coffee table in the family living area.

Don’t be fooled by all the grays and neutrals, either, not even one upstairs bedroom with a beach sand-colored coverlet where lies Ted, their matching sandy-hued rescue kitty with a lion’s face. Also upstairs, besides guest bedrooms and many bathrooms, a huge “bonus” room over the garage, with café au lait walls and marshmallow-soft cocoa carpeting, which they use for watching movies.

For Cissy, this house became a place to express her newfound interest in art, particularly contemporary and abstract paintings done by Southern women. The gray walls come alive with Picasso-esque faces by Windy O’Connor of Charlotte; other artists represented live in Atlanta, Charleston and Athens. Trish Deerwester of Southern Pines created three abstracts in, no surprise, gray, blue and white, while Cissy commissioned Becky Clodfelter of Greensboro to create a large abstract for the foyer, which introduces the palette continued through the house.

Over the clawfoot tub, a seated nude. Dominating the stairwell, a 10-foot geometric canvas found rolled up in the corner of a High Point showroom corner.

Yet Cissy’s favorite is a portrait of a cow. “They’re gentle, they give milk.”

Bruce leans another way. “I’m an Ansel Adams, Ben Ham (black and white photography) kind of guy,” as represented in the mix.

Taken together, Cissy dubs the look she and Moore created “polished casual,” to which Bruce adds “comfortable, not too pretentious.”

Landscaping is another story. “Some people have a boat. We have a garden,” Bruce says. From the looks of it, both boast green thumbs plus green fingers. A few magnolias and other trees came with the house. They have added a dense wall of greenery to screen the house from a moderately trafficked street. Cissy reels off the names with expert familiarity: tea olive bush, loropetalum, butterfly bush, viburnum, nandina, lavender, rosemary, aucuba and enormous blue hydrangeas framed by the windows.

Starting over, as the Beckerts have done, seems unusual except after fire or flood. Bruce reasons differently: “People have too much stuff. I don’t want my stuff to dictate my life.” This should be easier with new stuff that lacks an emotional attachment to heirlooms.

Cissy sums up their effort. “This house is who were are and what we love.” PS

2019 Feature House

To Thine Own Self Be True

Designer expresses her many loves in Pinehurst cottage

By Deborah Salomon

Photographs by John Koob Gessner

A perfect and very personal renovation is a hard act to follow . . . unless motivated by the heart.

Residential perfection is what interior designer/tennis ace/gardener/artist/yoga practitioner Julie Sanford achieved a decade ago when she resurrected a modest Pinehurst cottage to reflect her background, her foreground, her tastes, philosophies and talents. This woman has sailed across the Atlantic in a 42-foot sloop; climbed partway up Machu Picchu; snorkeled black holes of the Caribbean. She has furnished Nantucket compounds and Manhattan condos for clients; a pied-à-terre in Paris and a Newport, Rhode Island, showplace. Julie’s achievements have reached The New York Times Magazine and Country Living. Her recent projects include collages crafted from leftover wallpaper, as well as further adapting her Pinehurst gem where the sign over the front door reads “Craven Cottage.”

Julie’s approach: “I like the integrity of real. Edit out the junk. Keep the things that motivate you, that make you feel good,” which in her case would be living by the sea. Notice oceanscapes, beaches and ship art. She isn’t shy with color, either subtle or primary: bedroom walls suggest a pineapple daiquiri. A ripe-tomato red lamp jumps off its table. Her kitchen, void of Sub-Zero and Viking, glows pale apricot set off by cream cupboards and a khaki tile backsplash. “People spend a fortune on the kitchen. It’s not my thing. I’m a good cook but I don’t need the (mega-appliances).” What she does need is open shelving stacked with blue English Transferware, which she uses daily.

Pervading all, aquamarine, the watery hue Julie used for vestibule floor tiles and living room upholstery. “My spiritual home is the Caribbean,” she admits.

Whimsy — of course. Who else covers a seat cushion with fabric picturing giant insects or runs a row of buttons down a dining room chair? That pink “thing” resembling Valentine lollipops standing at attention on a textured rose Parsons’ table in the otherwise classic living room is an antique balloon mold. Julie favors sculptures of hands which reach out, armless, from shelves and tables. To her, they represent “lending a hand” to someone in need.

Craven and four sister cottages were built in 1921 and sold to Pinehurst resort as rental properties. According to records at the Tufts Archives, seasonal rental was $1,500. The façade is particularly notable, with a broad gable facing the street, an English country porch and Tudor-arched front door — a feature Julie repeated between the living and dining rooms, and the family room and kitchen. Alice Craven, proprietor of a village knitting shop, occupied the house in the 1930s, followed by John Thomas Craven in the 1950s. Post-Cravens, the cottage was renamed generic Longleaf, but Craven remains over the door.

Julie, raised in New England, found Pinehurst during a visit to Fayetteville, where her mother was being cared for. The village resembled familiar ones in Vermont and on Cape Cod but with a milder climate. Most important, a tennis community thrived here. The cottage she found, drowning in ’60s décor, mandated a major renovation, a welcome challenge for this experienced designer who appreciated the era it represented, especially the narrow-board floors, elaborate crossbeam door and window frames, and light streaming in on all sides — plus a rare full basement. Julie found its modest size (then barely 2,000 square feet) appealing. She believes people relate better in intimate settings.

“The house just sang to me from the get-go.”

And then, renovation and furnishing accomplished, part-time occupancy achieved, life shifted.

“I met a man, George Lynch, the love of my life.”

After living single for 25 years, Julie realized modifications would be necessary. Her low-ceilinged bedrooms were in the finished attic, accessed by a steep, narrow staircase. The large main floor room Julie had added as a yoga studio became a master bed-sitting room painted yellow, her “happy color.” Its bathroom has dizzying black polka-dot wallpaper punctuated with French Gien plates, each decorated with a cartoon. “A bit extreme, but it makes me laugh,” Julie says. She built a family room with cathedral ceiling off the kitchen because, “My husband is a big man. We have four dogs. There wasn’t room anywhere for me to sit.” Original wood floors, except in the dining room, have been pickled (whitewashed), rendering the rooms light and summery, reminiscent of Martha’s Vineyard.

Completing the enlargement is a deck, covered and open, overlooking the garden. A self-described passionate gardener, Julie recalls how caring for geraniums figured in meeting the love of her life.

An organic, zen-calm separates Julie’s space from houses bustling with décor trends. She has achieved a new, fresh feeling using antiques of different periods and provenance that hang together like old friends. The almost monastic absence of clutter gives each piece — whether a marble-topped side table or an inlaid bureau — room to shine. The same with paintings, some she did herself, mounted singly rather than in groups. Themes and colors (especially green, representing nature) flow from room to room, as do objects like Staffordshire figurine lamps and animal art.

Perfect as this home is, Julie and George have another, equally unusual: a 19th century mobile chapel used by itinerant New England preachers. The 20-by-28-foot wheeled structure was pulled from town to town by oxen. Now, the couple has moored it in Jamestown, Rhode Island, within sight of the sea, from whence Julie came.

“My home is my sanctuary,” Julie says. And, in this case, a self-portrait. PS

2019 Feature House