ONE FAMILY'S SMALL TREASURE
From the Fall 2004 Issue

BY SARAH THOMAS
PHOTOS BY STEVEN MCBRIDE

In 1986, when Savannah, Ga. natives Robert and Laura O'Conner had the chance to move to the mountains, Rob grabbed a map of Asheville, N.C., and started looking for a dead-end road. A road without much traffic. Maybe outside of town. Someplace nice to raise their two boys. He found it. And by chance, a cabin waiting for just the right family. That was the beginning.

The upper loft, shrouded in matching quilts, now serves as the private area for sons Josh and Zach.

They had always dreamed of living in the mountains. And when the opportunity came, Rob O’Conner thought he’d found the perfect spot: a quiet road outside Asheville, N.C. that not only had a dead end, but wound up in Pisgah National Forest.

So he and Laura, both natives of Savannah, Ga., took a drive to check things out. Sure enough, there was a For Sale sign on the road. There were also two houses up the drive, one a small log house and the other a larger home further up the hill. Surely, it was the big house for sale, something that looked like more than the couple could afford. Nonetheless, they drove to a pay phone and called.

As fate would have it, little log house was for sale.

Only Bare Bones
The house was none too promising when Robert and Laura returned to look it over. It had less than 600 square feet of living space on the first floor, and an unheated upstairs loft that really wasn’t usable for anything but storage. Ivy grew up the exposed logs on one wall and vines had infiltrated the loft. To make matters worse, the couple’s two boys – ages 3 and 6 months – would have to share a tiny bedroom and even the heating situation was a bit sketchy.

Still the house had an unmistakable charm that the O’Conners could not resist.
They offered the owner $1,000 to hold the house for them, and in no time, they had packed up and made the move. It was the first home they had ever owned.

“It was all ours and we loved it,” says Laura, “and it was so much fun learning about the history of the place. A neighbor, who’s now in his 80s, brought the logs by horse and buggy when the house was built in 1938. One of the first people to live here stopped by and told us how he used to sleep in the loft in winter and could see the snow blowing in through the cracks.”

Coming Back to Life

In contrast to the mostly wooded two-acre lot, a sea of color and bloom invites visitors to the O’Conners’ front door.

The little family moved in and set about making the house a home. It was a creative process.

One of the first things Robert did was remove chinking between logs high up in the then-living room wall in order to let in more light. He left a gap between two logs and inserted heavy glass panes. Just above that, he added empty baby food jars to new chinking, which not only brightened the room but brought a sparkle to the dark logs. He did the same thing above the shower stall in the bathroom, using tall, narrow glass canisters – a much less expensive alternative to glass bricks.

“That’s one of the great things about living in a not-new or just-built house,” Robert says. “You can do crazy stuff.”

Growing and Changing
Then, after five years of watching the little boys get bigger, the O’Conners realized the time came to expand. In 1991, the old roof came off and a new roof went on to enlarge the loft and add a great room with skylights. The house quickly gained more than 1,000 square feet of living space. Now the rear log wall was indoors and Robert and Laura began to stretch their creativity.
The old living room became an elegantly rustic dining room with a fish camp motif. The boys moved into the loft – now open to the great room below – and Laura answered their need for privacy by hanging four matching quilts to enclose the space. The youngsters’ old room became a much larger bathroom where Laura installed her mother’s dressmaker’s dummy in one corner as a charming contrast to chocolate-colored logs.

A few eclectic pieces of furniture – a $5 yard-sale chest in mint green with pink handles, a gorgeous dining room set and some artistic touches – turned the little log house into a larger, yet still warm and cozy home for Robert, Laura, Josh, Zach and a little brown dog named Teddy. Eventually, Lucy, a second dog, joined the family. But the house is only half the story.

Formerly the living room, today’s rustic dining room is finished with a fishing motif but still holds baby food jars (near ceiling on right) inserted in redone chinking.

A Wealth of Jewels
For Laura, her comfortable home is just a place to rest and eat when she’s not gardening.

Her endless toil is obvious.

The two-acre lot is mostly wooded and the front lawn is a sea of hostas growing beneath pine trees. In early summer, the family can look down from the front porch into a purple haze of bloom. Surrounding the house, though, are Laura’s gardens.

To one side, where the roof nearly slopes to the ground, there’s river rock that gives way to a path made with bricks salvaged from an old chimney. All along the path runs the garden that got everything started. This was the bare spot where, after the addition was complete, Robert planted Laura a Mother’s Day garden. He sowed handfuls of seed that came up in a riot of color and Laura was smitten.

Since then, the garden has grown steadily to take over a sizable portion of the lot.

In front, there’s a little fence that seems to be holding back a riot of bee balm, coneflower, black-eyed Susans and phlox… flowers Laura somehow coaxes into thriving in spite of the partial sun. This is the spot where Robert had “one more year to try to get grass to grow,” according to Laura. He didn’t, and now moss thrives between inviting stone paths that wander around the side of the house and between beds of variegated hostas, ferns and toad lilies, one of Laura’s favorites.


The Charming Extras
In addition to beautiful plants, there are whimsical touches throughout the garden.

When Lucy broke the globe on a floor lamp, Laura stuck it upside-down in a garden bed to serve as an ornate, coppery stand for a potted plant. The back door opens onto the patio Rob laid by hand, chipping away at the warm, peach-colored stones to make them fit just so in a bed of sand. There’s a dogwood tree coming up through the stone, a table with benches and, to complete the inviting picture, a post with a window box mounted on it. Laura designed it using an Adolph’s meat tenderizer box and an old window from a neighbor’s home remodeling project. A couple of candles and a pot of ivy finish the look.

Although she grew up around plants – her parents owned a nursery – Laura didn’t really know the rules of gardening. She’s learned by trial and error, and has come away with some key pieces of advice.

“Learn the rules and then break them,” she said. “I just put the plant there and if I don’t like, I move it.”

In the course of writing this article, Teddy, who was 16 years old, passed away. This story is in memory of one of the best dogs and best friends a family ever had.