Category: St. Clair Living

‘Cool Springs International Airport’

Story by Elaine Hobson Miller
Photos by Susan Wall

Paulette Stills wanted a larger house. Jim Stills wanted a larger hangar. So, they compromised and built a house within a hangar.

“We originally lived in an apartment inside a hangar on the lake next door,” says Paulette. “I thought I wanted more space, and Jim wanted to get an airplane to go with his helicopter. So here we are.”

Where they are is, literally, in a house inside a hangar. The 60-foot-by-100-foot metal structure was erected on site, and the house sits inside of it. The interior walls are non-weight bearing, so the only physical connections between the hangar and the house are at the downstairs windows and doors. “The house could easily be moved or reconfigured,” says Paulette.

The Stillses bought their 40-acre property on County Road 31 about 30 years ago. In 2006, they started construction on their hangar-house, which they completed in 2008. She designed the 1.5-level house with its 22-foot tall ceiling, and Jim served as contractor. He did a lot of the work himself, including staining and grouting the concrete floors throughout the lower level.

He designed and built the swimming pool and hot tub in the back corner of the 2,700-square-foot wrap-around screened porch. Pool and tub are made of stone and feature four waterfalls, including one flowing from the hot tub into the six-foot-deep end of the sloped-bottom pool. “I said if I’m going to live in a metal building, I want a screened porch,” Paulette says. “I gave him the measurements, and he built it.”

Most of the 2,400 square-foot lower level of the house is one large room spanning the width of the metal building. Occupying one end of this Great Room is a fireplace made of Iranian copper that Jim had been saving since the mid-70s. At that time, he was teaching the Shah of Iran how to fly a helicopter, something Jim had been doing since his Army days in Vietnam. “I worked in the Bell Flight School’s secretarial office,” Paulette says. “He had intended to build a bar with that copper, but I wouldn’t let him.”

Their dining table sits near the center of the room, while the expansive kitchen takes up the other end. It features maple cabinets, granite countertops and Frigidaire appliances, including both gas and electric cooktops and a refrigerator almost big enough to walk in to. “All of our cabinets throughout the house are made of maple, all of the countertops are granite, and all of the trim work is made of clear pine,” says Jim.

The kitchen opens into a small pantry that opens on another side into a 30-foot long, 10-foot wide “me” room that Jim claims as his own. The mechanical portions of the house’s HVAC system are there, but so are a desk at one end and a sewing machine and antique dress pattern table at the other. The sewing end is where Jim puts together the handmade boots he’s known for. “That’s what I do in the winter months,” says Jim. Although he gives them away to friends and family, he has managed to retain three pair for himself. He has a red, white and black pair made of ostrich, a black pair made of leather and another black pair made of alligator skin. Each involved several hundred hours of work.

Jim flew helicopters for the Army in Vietnam, and for the former Carraway Hospital’s Life Saver Service for 15 years. He retired in 1994, then purchased his light-weight Bell 47G-2 helicopter from the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department a few years after that. The walls of his “me” room are lined with flight instructor certificates, photos, his framed service medals (Purple Heart, Bronze Star and Air Medal), the Easy-Release Fork Jim invented a few years ago, along with engravings of his patents for the two versions of that fork. The invention is a grilling fork that allows its user to spear meat, then slide it off with the flick of a thumb.

The master suite takes up most of the space on the other side of the kitchen-Great Room. It begins at the kitchen end with tray-ceilinged bedroom containing a handmade, oversized headboard and queen bed, plus built-in cabinets to house Jim’s closet and a television set. “That headboard is made like a mantel,” says Paulette. “My dad and I laid the pieces out on the floor at Lowe’s, my dad built it, and I painted it.”

The master bath flows out of one end of the bedroom in a long passageway that features a counter on one side and a 4 x 8-foot stone-tiled shower on the other. “Three of our four bathrooms are 4 x 8 feet,” says Jim. His-and-hers glass sinks sit on top of the master bath’s counter. At the other end, the bath flows into a 10 x 12-foot walk-in closet. Around the corner to the right is the laundry room, which opens back into the Great Room near the elevator.

That elevator is another of Jim’s designs. “I wanted an elevator, but I wasn’t present when he installed it,” says Paulette. “I had pictured a small, enclosed one that blended with its surroundings.”

What she got was an open-air freight elevator made of gray metal with a wooden floor. A machine shop in Springville built the frame, and its owner, Mickey Dooley, helped Jim install it. Those who don’t like the loud whir of the motor or the open-air feeling while traveling upward can take the stairs, which start as a spiral staircase on one side of the elevator and end as steps on the other side.

To say Jim is a bit of a do-it-yourselfer would be an understatement. He decided the elevator’s motor was too noisy, so he set about to replace it — by himself. He used a galvanized pipe to prop the elevator up, so it wouldn’t descend while he was working. After installing the new motor, he was trying to take the old one down when the pipe gave way. The elevator descended abruptly, and so did Jim. He broke his leg in the mishap, and the old, non-functional motor remains where it was, in the overhead framework.

On the upper level, the elevator opens onto an L-shaped balcony that overlooks the kitchen and Great Room. Off the long side of the balcony, two guest rooms and two full baths mirror each other. The short end of the balcony is much narrower, and a storage area at that end runs across the width of the house. “That’s my storage area,” Paulette says. One of the guest rooms has an open cabinet Jim built to display her father’s telephone memorabilia, such as antique telephones and a toy version of a telephone company repair truck. “He was an engineer with the phone company when it was Southern Bell,” says Paulette, who retired from AT&T five years ago.

Jim’s mom’s pedal organ and an antique wooden wheelchair, which Jim used extensively while recuperating from his broken leg, occupy one corner of the long side of the balcony. A little farther down, near the narrow end of the balcony, stands a mill bin that has been in Paulette’s family for several generations. She uses it as a quilt box. “Can you imagine the worms and bugs that must have got into the meal and flour stored in these bins?,” Paulette muses. On top of the bin is a small, 1,500 year-old spinning wheel from Iran.

On the opposite side of the house walls, Jim’s hangar opens with a giant, overhead door. The hangar is also accessible through the small sitting area at the back side of the wrap-around porch, and through Jim’s “me” room on the other side of the house.

It looks like most homeowners’ garages. In other words, it’s full. “There’s no way in hell I can get all my stuff in here and make it look organized,” Jim says. “Everything’s on wheels, so I just move something out of the way to get to something else.”

A motorhome, two mattresses, furniture, a basketball goal, two zero-turn lawn mowers and stacks and stacks of Easy-Off Fork raw materials take up so much of the space it’s as if the Bell were shoved in as an afterthought, rather than being the reason for the space. The helicopter, too, is on rollers, and Jim pulls it out with one of the lawn mowers, releases the wheels and heads skyward. It has a 150-mile range, plenty for the couple’s trips to the mountains or the beach.

The Stills’ hangar-house faces the 2,200-foot-long grassy, east-west runway. As many as four or five airplanes might be on that strip any given Sunday afternoon, flown in by some of Jim’s aviation buddies. Paulette wishes she had a more formal entrance for them and other guests besides the hangar door or the one on the screened porch.

“This is the Cool Springs International Airport,” Jim quips. “Who needs a formal entrance?”

On A Clear Day You Can See Forever

Story Elaine Hobson Miller
Photos by Michael Callahan

When Todd and Liz Wheeles went house-hunting, they looked for something off the beaten path. They found it in a small hunting cabin on 115 acres atop Bowlin Bluff, a place so remote even the mail carrier and the garbage man have trouble getting to it.

“We have a post office box, and we carry the garbage out as we leave,” Liz says. “We often have to keep friends on the phone and guide them in or meet them at the bottom of the hill and drive them up.”

The only way in or out is via a dirt road that’s best traveled by truck or an all-terrain vehicle. The drive is worth the effort, though. The view at the top is breathtaking.

The house sits 30 feet from a granite bluff that’s about 1,070 feet in elevation. From their deck, the Wheeleses can see Bald Rock Mountain eight miles away. As for the sunsets, “breathtaking” doesn’t come close to describing them.

“The sunsets up here are spectacular,” says Todd. “But we enjoy the deck any time of the day, whether it’s coffee in the morning, wine in the afternoon, or whiskey by the night fire.”

By knocking out a side wall and adding a 30-by-20-foot den, gutting the kitchen and both downstairs bathrooms, then extending the back porch to wrap around the new room, they turned a cabin with a view into a cozy home with ample space for a family of six.

The original cabin had a small living room and eat-in kitchen when the Wheeleses bought it a year ago. Floors throughout the house were covered in mismatched linoleum, there was a small chimney and window on the side wall, and a small deck off the kitchen. “There were deer heads hanging everywhere,” Liz says. They replaced all the flooring with natural hickory, added wainscoting upstairs and painted every room in the house.

 Integrity Cabinets of Ashland built new kitchen cabinets and all the bathroom vanities out of solid hickory. The couple chose Integrity because Todd is from Ashland and went to school with its owner, David Williams. The countertops in the kitchen and bathrooms are made of granite. Removing the side wall opened up the kitchen to the new den and created a large dining area between them. Edison lights hang over a 10-foot long dining table and matching benches made of salvaged pine by The Vintage Station of Bessemer. The table’s length allows plenty of seating for Todd, Liz and their four children. “Thanksgiving, there were 11 of us here, and we didn’t take up half the table,” Liz says.

Todd wanted a larger shower in the master bathroom, so they closed up a tiny laundry closet in the kitchen that adjoined the master suite to get some extra space. They used re-claimed tin tiles for the bathroom ceiling.

The side wall they removed had one small chimney, but the house now has two. They stand back-to-back, in the den and on the deck behind it. Both are constructed of hand-laid, stacked stone. They share the same foundation, but the one in the Great Room is a wood-burning fireplace lined with firebrick, while the outside fireplace is a firebox with a stove-pipe chimney.

Although Liz got help with furniture selections and decorating from Cindi B. Jones of Savvy Shoestring Interiors, the two leather sofas in the den were Todd’s idea. The two mission-style arm chairs at the front window came from Liz’s father’s house in New Orleans, and an antique dining chair that belonged to her great-grandmother is placed next to the fireplace.

The fox skin hanging over the chair was Todd’s whimsical purchase from a shop near Gulf Shores. Jones helped Liz find the wing chair placed at another window, some lamps, side tables and art work. The den has a tongue-in-groove pine ceiling with cedar beams.

The stairs to the second floor were rebuilt using hickory treads and pine kick plates.

Upstairs, the Wheeleses added pine tongue-in-groove wainscoting, stained the same color as the woodwork throughout the house. All of the beds there, as well as the king-size bed in the master bedroom downstairs, were made out of reclaimed wood by The Vintage Station of Bessemer and have solid wood frames.

One child’s bed has a horizontal headboard made with random-length wood planks, some stained to match the woodwork, others painted white. In another child’s room, the headboard is made with a wood frame and tin inserts from an old church ceiling and is painted white. A third headboard is a reclaimed door turned horizontally. The upstairs bathroom ceiling is made from more reclaimed tin tiles, and its shower curtain has a deer motif. “We wanted the look of a log house without having to build one – a house with a woodsy feeling inside,” says Liz.

Sentimental family heirlooms add to the charm of the upstairs, too. Liz used a table that belonged to her dad in one child’s bedroom, and another of her great-grandmother’s dining chairs in another. A metronome that used to sit atop her grandmother’s piano rests silently on a window sill. Despite the fact that the sun comes up at the front of the house, it bathes the back of the house in a soft glow that penetrates the upstairs window panes. “The kids love it,” Liz says.

Because of the children, Todd and Liz did not want the upstairs shut off from the downstairs. So, their contractor, Rick Layfield of Rick Layfield Construction in Ashville, solved that problem by leaving the end of the hallway open to the Great Room. Layfield framed heavy-gauged wire with pine so the kids can see into the room below, without falling over or through the railing. He repeated that same type of structure as an extension of the stair rail at its bottom end, and again around the deck.

“We wanted the house to blend with its surroundings, so we painted the outside a mossy green,” says Todd. Layfield matched the cement-board siding outside and the metal roofing that was on the original house to extend around and over the room addition. He also built a small step porch in front and another, gated set of steps off the front of the deck.

Plastic chairs adorn the deck until the Wheeleses can decide what they want permanently. Meanwhile, they have to stack the chairs and place them against the house when not in use because the wind is so strong on the bluff that it will carry loose, lightweight furniture down the mountain.

“We are on a ridge, almost like a peninsula,” Todd says. “I’m a map guy, and in my topographical map book, the mountain we’re on is called Backbone Mountain.” Todd used that same map to chart the winding paths of the two trails he had bulldozed through the property, which come in handy when he and his son and their friends want to hunt.

Unfortunately, the trails don’t connect. “It’s so steep and rocky, we’d have to cut through someone else’s property to connect them,” he says.

Cattle during the week, weddings on weekends

Story by Elaine Hobson Miller
Photos by Michael Callahan

What started as letting a few friends “borrow” their barn to hold weddings has turned into a full-fledged event venue for the St. John Family in Pell City. Unlike other barns built specifically for events, this one is a cow barn that houses registered Hereford heifers and gets pressure-washed for special occasions.

“We went public in January of 2016,” says Locke St. John, one of two sons of farm owners Joy and Kent St. John. “As of the first of November, we’d had 12 weddings, and we had 250 people here to celebrate the (high school) graduation of my brother, Carter.”

Like the farm itself, The Barn at Dry Creek Farms is a family-run operation. Carter, 19, is a freshman at Jefferson State Community College, but has classes only two days a week. The remainder of his time is spent on the farm. Locke, 23, is there all day September through March, the months that he isn’t playing pro baseball for the Connecticut Tigers, a Detroit farm team. Mom and Dad, Joy and Kent St. John, do chores before and after work each day.

“Locke handles a lot of the marketing details and promotions from wherever he might be in the Minor Leagues,” Joy says. “I work all day but when there is an event at The Barn, I go after work and help clean in preparation for or after the event.”

The family lives up the road in a log cabin on 20 acres of land. They purchased another 50 or so acres four years ago to expand their cattle business, and it came with the red barn. They run 60-70 cows, selling the commercial (non-registered) ones at the Ashville Stockyards, and show some of their animals, too. “We do two to five shows a year at the state and national level,” Locke says. “We’ve shown our cows in Colorado, South Dakota, Kentucky, Wisconsin and Texas.”

The St. Johns painted the front of the barn when they started hosting weddings, but left the back side in its rustic, weather-beaten state. They keep mini-lights strung up inside the barn, and small round bulbs at the back, where tables are often set up for a reception or a band might play while people dance on the concrete patio.

“We own 14 tables and 80 chairs, and we’re buying 20 more chairs,” Locke says. “People can rent more tables and chairs if they need them, and they can use the hay loft for over-flows, and some use the stalls, too. One wedding party had a cloth down in each stall to designate various stations, such as a kids’ play area, a crawfish table and a drink stall.”

The Barn has a bathroom and dressing room. Decorated with banners from the shows in which the St. John heifers have competed, the dressing room has bar stools with farm-themed backs, a leather sofa, wide-screen TV, small refrigerator and a deer head on the wall. “One couple brought their small camper for the bride to change in,” Locke adds. When not being used for a wedding, the changing room makes a great hangout for Locke, Carter and friends.

“I would absolutely recommend The Barn at Dry Creek Farms to anyone who wants their special day to be beautiful, easy, and affordable,” one reviewer posted on weddingwire.com, an internet site the St. Johns began using for advertising recently. “They basically give you the key and it’s yours to use. They will offer ideas if you have any questions about how other couples set up for their ceremonies and receptions. On top of that, the barn is located on simply gorgeous property. Overall, just a perfect venue for couples wanting a rustic barn wedding without breaking the bank.”

Martin houses made from gourds flank the barn, a six-stall shed to one side houses farm equipment, trucks and a travel trailer, a second shed protects a John Deere tractor and round hay bales, which the St. Johns bale themselves, and a small grain silo stands between the sheds. Fence panels lying to one side of the barn and the cattle chutes on the other side bear testimony to the fact that this is a real, working farm. The pond, the Dry Creek Farms sign hanging between two bent cedar trees, and the swing next to the barn make picturesque backdrops for wedding, graduation or birthday party photos.

Peak seasons for 2016 were spring and fall, but any season, people have the choice of getting married at the barn or in front of the lake under an arch that was left behind by a wedding party. Rates are different during the week than on weekends, and some wedding parties will rent the venue for two days and hold rehearsal dinner there, too.

While people use their own wedding photographer and planner and do their own decorating and cleaning up after the wedding, the St. Johns move the cows and hose down the floors before the wedding party descends. “During peak seasons, we won’t have the cows in the barn as much so there is less pressure washing to do,” Locke says.

The St. Johns have a web page for their farm, DryCreekFarmsCattle.com, and the event venue has its own Facebook page, The Barn at Dry Creek Farms.

“The Barn at Dry Creek Farms was amazing,” another weddingwire.com reviewer posted. “It was an actual red barn and the pond in front adds so much. It’s a lot of DIY, which makes it fun and the way you want it to be. Many options for ceremony and reception. Also Kent and Joy are great to work with!”

Another reviewer said her party built a dance floor in the middle of the barn and used the stalls as stations for food and drinks and a photo booth.

Although his primary role in the operation is the day-to day farming side of it, Carter helps out with weddings when needed. “The farming side is where my knowledge is at,” he says. “But when there’s something that needs to be done for The Barn venue, I’m there for it.”

His mom says the family works together to do all the chores each day. “That usually entails getting up early to get things done, like checking cows, putting out hay and feeding, before everyone starts their own schedule for the day,” she says.

Working on the farm and helping to run the event venue is a lot of work, Locke says, but he vows that he wouldn’t do it if he didn’t love it. “They have taught my brother and me responsibility and the business part of life,” he says.

Four-legged friend learning to help others

Story by Carol Pappas
Photos by Wallace Bromberg Jr.

Teddy has the kind of face guaranteed to make you smile. Wavy chestnut-colored hair frames a pair of big brown eyes – if you can see them through the hair – that reveal the gentle spirit that resides within.

Around the St. Clair County School System, where he often visits, they call him “Teddy, the Wonder Dog.”

To his owner, Melinda Splawn, director of personnel for the school system, he’s just plain lovable, huggable, affable Teddy whose personality is perfect for bringing comfort to those when they need it most.

Teddy is a Wire-Haired Pointing Griffon who will one day be a Hand in Paw therapy dog, offering that same lovable, huggable, affable personality to people who are in need of a sizable lift in spirits. They may be nursing home residents, Alzheimer’s patients, children in cancer treatment or a weary caregiver. Teddy will be there to brighten the roughest of days.

Teddy’s story begins with a specific search for just the right puppy, according to Melinda. “I wanted one who doesn’t shed. He had to have the temperament for Hand in Paw.” And, because Melinda’s father was an avid bird hunter and she treasured those outings with him, she thought, “if the dog could be a bird hunter, that would really be cool. I didn’t think such a dog existed.”

But as fate usually intervenes in everyday life, Melinda spotted the object of her search or at least the idea of it.

One Saturday, she was at Birmingham’s Pepper Place, an outdoor market, buying fresh vegetables. One of the vendors had a dog with him, and she remarked how “beautiful” the dog was and inquired about the breed.

She asked about his temperament, and the man replied, “He sleeps in the bed with us. He doesn’t shed.” Then, he added, “He loves to swim. He has webbed feet.”

That’s all it took. “Oh my gosh, that dog is wonderful!,” she recalled saying.

Then, she set out to find one just like him. She started looking for online breeders with a simple email message to each one: “Do you have any pups?”

Several answers were “no,” but then she received a reply from a breeder who said he had a puppy, but it was picked out to go to a family with special needs although he was rethinking that decision and would have to know more about her.

Melinda wrote back, pouring out emotions about “my dad’s love of bird hunting, my desire to continue work with Hand in Paw and the opportunity to continue enjoying special times with my dad and brother.”

The breeder said he and his wife spent the night talking about the letter and concluded, “ ‘Your home seems like the perfect place for the dog.’ ”

When she picked him up he was 12 weeks old. Melinda said the longer puppies are with their mother the better it can be. “He bonded with me just that fast. It was amazing.”

But then it was time for a name. She had just watched the Ken Burns’ documentary on the Roosevelts, where his family called Teddy Roosevelt “Great Heart” because of his blend of strength, courage and gentleness.

When she looked at her new puppy, she saw the same attributes. “Although he loved to run and play, this puppy loved to be loved on. He was gentle. That’s the Hand in Paw side, gentle and sweet.”

And that was all it took. “I think we have a Teddy,” she said.

Teddy has already demonstrated his gentleness. He diffused a couple of emotional incidents at the school system, offering comfort merely with his presence.

As he progressed toward the Hand in Paw goal, Melinda took him to a trainer, who exposed him to other people – old, young, children. He was exposed to elevators and electric doors, anything that he might encounter on a Hand in Paw mission, to make sure his reaction was positive, even-tempered. Teddy, of course, passed.

An apparently gifted student, he passed bird training, too.

At 2, Teddy is a bundle of boundless energy, regularly galloping at a frenetic pace through the woods at his favorite exercise spot – the cross country course at St. Clair County High School. He disappears momentarily to take a swim in the marsh among the towering reeds. He emerges, soaked, his tongue swinging back and forth like a pendulum.

He’s unmistakably one happy fella. And judging by the looks of him, he is on the trail of making others who need a lift just as happy.

Bluff View retreat a feast for eyes and soul

Story by Carol Pappas
Photos by Wallace Bromberg Jr.

Cindy Massey never really thinks of herself as lucky. She knows it.

All she has to do is take a panoramic look around the 130 acres of bluffs, a rushing creek, wide open pasture and enveloping woods that climb upward, almost as if they reach to the sky. It is paradise found, hidden away between a pair of north St. Clair County mountainsides.

Welcome to the appropriately named, Bluff View Farm, where Foxxy, Lulu, Arley and Lottie, Cindy’s four rescues, are just as content as their master. And why not? A rustic, cozy suite, a barn with a more than livable loft and dozens of acres of natural beauty are their home. And they make the best use of it, scurrying in and out, up and down voluminous trails or just settling into the perfect spot for a nap – in Cindy’s lap or in an easy chair.

Oh, and don’t forget, John, Cindy’s stepfather, and his two four-footed friends, Bear and Dora. They’re just as content. They live in the cabin just across the way.

It wasn’t always their home. They acquired the property after Cindy’s mother died a few years ago. Cindy, a retired nurse practitioner at Birmingham Heart Clinic and a former helicopter flight nurse, saw the farm as a getaway. “More and more, I found myself making excuses to leave later and later on Sunday,” she said.

Her two horses had been boarded, and she finally made the decision to move them to the farm. “After I moved my horses here, I never left,” she said.

John decided to get out of the big city, too. He moved to the cabin already on the farm. While planning her own cabin, she lived in the barn’s one-bedroom loft, complete with kitchen, sitting room and a mountain view that seemingly has no end. A screened porch overlooks the arena, a meandering creek and a bridge with thick, towering woods on either side of this picture perfect scene acting as curtain wings to a distant mountain backdrop.

It is her vision that makes this place so special. She knew what she wanted when she was looking for acreage in St. Clair County. She could see it. She was working with Brian Camp at Lovejoy Realty, and owner Lyman Lovejoy said he knew of such a place when she described it. Only problem was, it wasn’t for sale.

But Lovejoy persisted, contacting the owner, Tammi Manley, and eventually, Cindy’s vision began to take shape. Tammy agreed to sell.

First, Cindy added special touches to the cabin — a wood burning fireplace and reclaimed wood floors from River Bottom Pine in north Birmingham. Two bridges were added when Cindy’s cabin was built. The first bridge was constructed across the creek to bring building materials to the site. The second bridge was added from the deck from the existing cabin to Cindy’s new cabin.

She redid the barn loft as a quaint, rustic living area, and she enlisted the help of builder Dennis Smothers of Benchmark Construction to create her cabin suite – separate from the existing cabin but joining it in a complementary look and feel.

“It was a bit of a challenge,” Cindy admitted. “But Dennis is a visionary, and he could see it. There is no question. I never could have had this without Dennis,” she said, motioning around the 718 square feet of a dream suite with views all around and special touches that are more like an artist’s creation on canvas than a construction project.

“We had a collaborative, creative relationship,” she said, and they drew the plans to “marry this house with that house (the original cabin). When you drive up, you can see he achieved that.”

A spacious screen porch greets you – along with the dogs – as you enter the suite. Cozy and comfortable, its music is made by the sound of the creek that runs nearby. Its view? Striking bluffs and woods all around.

Step inside, and a wood burning stove with a couple of easy chairs occupy a corner nook whose walls are floor to ceiling windows.

Directly across is a spectacular kitchen with a “truly custom bar” — a sheet of copper that has been allowed to patina, forming its counter top. John Ward, The Concrete Farmer, did the concrete work that finishes the bi-level island bar. He built the farm sink at his place, brought it to its new kitchen and then poured the concrete around it.

Don Leopard of Leopard Construction was the framer, and the structural beams are of repurposed lumber.

In a small space like this, every inch counts, she noted. Bedroom, great room, kitchen and sitting area are all in one open floor plan, but she gave each its own unique feel.

She wanted black skins for the lumber beneath the bar and in the living area. They found them at Evolutia, a lumber yard in north Birmingham. A custom cabinet from River Bottom Pine in the ‘living room’ beneath an oversized flat screen television holds everything from AV components to shoes.

The bedroom is a few steps away, but almost feels as if it is a separate place. The door leading to a separate bathroom and walk-in closet looks to be an old ice house cooler door. The sink is an antique biscuit table. Cabinet handles are old chair casters. Enter the closet through an old weathered, storm shelter door, which is fitting because the closet doubles as a storm shelter with its poured concrete insulation.

Only a few pieces of art – all by noted painter Arthur Price – accent the house. But as Cindy puts it, there’s no need for much. “The art in this house is out the windows” – bluff views all around, trees, sky and sunlight – they are the natural masterpiece.

French doors lead to a garden beneath the bluffs, accented from river rocks found in the creek. Native ferns and hydrangeas surround. It is a peaceful refuge, created by Rodney Griffin of Gardens by Griffin. “He’s so talented,” Cindy said. “He told me, ‘I let the land tell me what to do.’ ”

The land does speak in this place. It is a haven for all seasons. In fall, the leaves’ colorful palette show brightly through angled windows near the top of the A-frame roof line. In winter, the creek overflows its banks like rapids. Spring brings the picturesque colors of seasonal rebirth. And Summer showcases its vibrant greens and myriad hues.

Cindy understands the allure and appreciates just how lucky she is. “I pinch myself every morning that I get to wake up to this.”