LUCKY ENOUGH
Contemporary Design in Beech Mountain, N.C.

Photographs by
Mark Hutchison

A contemporary cabin. The Robinsons’ home combines traditional and modern, blending in with the trees around it.

Dick and Mattie Robinson’s butternut cabin, tucked away in pines and rhododendrons, was a family affair. Several years ago, son Joel and daughter-in-law Nicole of Log Cabin Homes of Americabuilt the contemporary, two-story, 1,800-square-foot home, with its hand-hewn chinking between white pine logs. Family and friends helped Dick lay the gas fireplace rock and construct the tongue-and-groove walls.

Cathedral ceilings, heavy timber exposed beams and open, light-filled rooms distinguish this easy maintenance abode. The couple serves buffet-style company meals at the convenient kitchen bar.

Dick and Mattie Robinson. They enjoy life in the house their son and daughter-in-law built.

Two large upstairs bedrooms with Z-shaped closet doors double as a loft. Bedecked with antique tools and tobacco cans, the basement contains Mattie’s locally famous canned beans, pickles, jellies and sauerkraut.
Dick, a retired electrician and scoutmaster, and Mattie, a former textile mill employee, originally wanted a summer cabin. Instead, the couple fell in love with the year-round solitude and changing seasons of the woodlands.
The family enjoys storytelling and making music on the wraparound deck and hiking on the Blue Ridge Parkway bordering their backyard. They also love fishing and watching black bears, wild turkeys and other wildlife poke around the compost, birdfeeders and old millstone.

Master bedroom. Rugs, blankets and cushions make the hardwood cozy.

Master bedroom. Rugs, blankets and cushions make the hardwood cozy.

An outdoor hot tub relieves the chill of winter. During that season, Mattie reminisces and adds photographs to her stained-glass scrapbook.
When his wife wants privacy, Dick, a self-described tinkerer, builds birdhouses and walking sticks or refinishes furniture in his windowless “pouting” shed.

At the table. Meals are informal at the Robinsons’ home.

Their front door sign reads:
If you’re lucky enough to live in the mountains, you’re lucky enough.

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