Category: St. Clair Living

Ashville farm turns into special wedding, event venue

Story and photos by Jim Smothers
Submitted Photos

When Jeff Caddell’s parents, Bud and Mildred, bought 110 acres in Ashville in 1989, they weren’t just looking for a home, they were also looking for the perfect spot for Bud to be able to enjoy his life-long hobby of building and flying remote controlled model airplanes. But he didn’t want it just for himself, so he chartered an RC club so others could enjoy the sport, and he was just happy to be able to host them at his place. The club is still going strong, even after his death, with 45 members at last count.

So after Jeff and his wife Sheila had a beautiful wedding of their own on a small island in the 8-acre lake on the property, it wasn’t long before they wanted others to be able to be able to use the property for their weddings, too, and they got the ball rolling last year. To date, about a dozen couples have begun their lives as man and wife at Mountain View Farms.

“There are five or six places here where people could have weddings,” Jeff said. “Inside or outside the barn, in the middle of a field, on the island – they could even have it on the lawn in front of our house overlooking the lake if they wanted to.”

Actually the barn isn’t ready yet, but the Caddells are excited about the plans for the future. Rather than building a purpose-built barn for weddings, they want to convert an existing barn that can be used for not only weddings but other large-scale events. The plan is to retro-fit the exterior of the barn with board and batten walls while retaining the original wood and tin on the inside for atmosphere.

“There’s 5,000 square feet inside. You can get a lot of people in there,” he said. “We will become a destination wedding and events venue next summer once we complete a big remodel of our large home that is being converted into a lodge with lots of stone, cedar, rusty tin and barn wood.

“‘The Lodge’ and ‘The Cottage’ at Mountain View Farms will sleep about 20 people and will be … offering overnight stays.”

Jeff credits an old friend with suggesting the farm as a wedding venue. Gary Liverett, director of the nearby Alpha Ranch ministry for young men, built the island and gazebo for Mildred Caddell in 2007. When the project was completed, Gary remarked it would be a nice place to have a wedding, which put the wheels in motion for Jeff and Sheila’s wedding in 2010. While the plan for hosting weddings was being hatched, Jeff and his mom were puzzled as to where the bride and bridesmaids could get ready. Sheila pointed out there was an unoccupied two-bedroom house on the property that would be perfect.

“’Well, duh!’ I thought,” Jeff said. “That was perfect.”

To get started they set up a Facebook page and offered the use of the farm at little or no charge for a limited number of weddings as a promotion, with the understanding that the Caddells could use photos from those events to show others what they had to offer.

One of the first weddings was actually a couple who remarried each other after being apart for decades.

“Dianne and Gary Duck actually remarried each other here at Mountain View Farms in May. It had been over 30 years since they divorced! They had a small wedding, and then rode away on Gary’s Harley. Gary remarked that he was young and stupid and lost her after being married a short time. Life went on, circumstances changed, and he found her again,” Caddell said.

More recently, the Caddells offered the farm as a venue for a very special couple. Daniel Creech and Belinda Dorough both attend a day program at United Cerebral Palsy in Birmingham, spending most of their days in wheelchairs, and living in a group home at night.

Daniel communicates by using his eyes to type on an electronic device and surprised Belinda when he popped the question to her. She can speak a little and first responded “What?” and then started crying before answering, “Yes!”

Daniel’s mom reached out to the community for help in making their dreams of a beautiful wedding come true via a Facebook post in which she was merely asking for some suggestions. In the end, a motorcycle club held a charity ride for them, and donations of rings, a cake, photographs and other services were all donated as word about their needs got around.

Their wedding day went like clockwork on a beautiful fall afternoon. Their powered wheelchairs zipped back and forth across the wooden bridge to the island as a custom-built sound system enabled friends and relatives to hear the ceremony and enjoy recorded music. The reception tent a short distance away provided an efficient serving area, and tables under strings of lights gave guests an enchanting evening as they enjoyed dancing on a pallet wood dance floor, a project which another couple that tied the knot there built for the Caddells.

All of the couples are special people, and the Caddells stay close to events to make sure their needs are met.

They are working on a plan to share the farm with another special group of people.

“After my mother passed, it was our great pleasure to make a substantial donation to Children’s Hospital in my parents’ honor,” Jeff said. “Mom and Dad had a charitable trust that provided for any remaining funds after their deaths to be donated to the charity. In talking to people at the hospital, they were interested in having a place for kids to go as a respite, so we’re working towards that.”

They are in the process of setting up a non-profit foundation to be funded by proceeds from weddings and other events at the farm to help fund those kinds of visits.

They are carrying on a tradition of giving established by his parents and want the Caddell Foundation of Hope to give hope to ailing children and their families and underprivileged children.

“When kids go through extended illnesses, their families are incredibly strained,” he said. “There are so many out of pocket expenses.”

The plan is to organize activities at the farm to give them a break without any expense.

Masterpiece by the water

Story by Carol Pappas
Photos by Michael Callahan

Howard and Linda Tutwiler seem the perfect match. They like to create beauty around them. And a look inside and outside their Logan Martin Lake home reveals that together, they have a talent for doing just that.

Howard, a designer  by trade, calls the planning of their home a “dream come true” for him. “Seldom, do you get to start with a clean sheet of paper.”

When they were selling their 90-acre “gentleman’s farm” in Talladega County, Howard said, they knew they wanted a view of the water and plenty of acreage for them and their three sons. The Tutwilers found both in property near the Pell City Civic Center, adjacent to Old US 231, which runs underneath Logan Martin Lake.

They first bought five acres and then learned the property next door was for sale. In all, they now own 22 acres, which allowed them to move into the old house on the land and begin building their new one 28 years ago.

The end result is a masterpiece for Tutwiler’s blank canvas. Taking into account their needs – and their desires – they certainly put their signature on it.

They have a 1,000 year old Tai-tsung Dynasty scroll that is eight feet tall. Hence, the high ceilings in the living room, where this impressive work of art hangs perfectly above the fireplace. Windows all around bathe the entire home in natural light. During the day, they point out, there is no need to even turn on a light.

The foyer is warm and inviting with a staircase leading you to the center of the home, as if you are walking into a perfectly framed painting. The interior of the house has the illusion of being in the round, employing what is known as a “cross hall plan” – no dedicated hallways, leaving no wasted space.

From that vantage point, you simply turn to see the kitchen, dining room, living room and study, hardwood floors throughout bringing it all together.

The eat-in kitchen is beautifully designed with antique white cabinets all around, granite countertops and a linear chandelier with five lights above an island. A glass-top dining table with a view of the water accents the open feel.

The formal dining room is simple and elegant with high back chairs encircling a round table. Deep red walls and crown molding form angles of the room with side tables and accent pieces on facing walls. A draped, oversized window reaching almost to the ceiling ushers in plenty of natural light.

There is a water view from every room in the house, Linda points out.

The angular living room is open to the ceiling of the second level of the home, surrounded by windows and French doors allowing an abundance of natural light to envelop the room. A marble fireplace acts almost like a pedestal just beneath the 8-foot scroll.

Four, low-sitting leather love seats – two on each side – face each other for ease of conversation across an intricately designed Oriental rug and small glass table.

A cozy study with wood burning fireplace houses Howard’s most prized possession – a wooden rocking chair he made himself in his garage workshop as a Christmas gift for Linda. But this is not just any rocking chair.  He used hand tools to make it in the technique of Sam Maloof, whose rocking chairs fetch a handsome $25,000 price and every president since Ronald Reagan has had one in the White House.

In 1959, he had seen Maloof’s techniques in a craft magazine, and he incorporated them in his thesis at Auburn University.

Years later, he spotted a book by Maloof in a bookstore, and he wrote him a letter about his inspirational work. In the return mail, Maloof sent him a three-page, handwritten letter and invited him to his California studio.

While working on a country club project in North Carolina, Tutwiler learned Maloof was conducting a seminar in Atlanta. He drove there just to shake hands and meet him. Later, they crossed paths again in Carmel, California, when Tutwiler was there working on another project. “He spent the whole day with me. It is one of the highlights of my career.” The next year, Maloof passed away.

After that, Tutwiler attended a class to teach young craftsmen how to make Maloof-inspired rockers – an arduous task of 10-hour days. When he returned home with his creation, it was in pieces. “For two months, I worked on putting it back together and sanding it,” he recalls. Now, he’s making one for each of his three sons.

Just like the rocker, there is an interesting feature around just about every corner of the Tutwiler house. The master bedroom, for instance, has a balcony overlooking the living room and across the way to a circular window with a bird’s eye view of the outdoors. Downstairs is a three-bedroom living area that accommodated the ‘growing up years’ of their sons – Adam, Aaron and Austin – referred to by Mom and Dad as “the A-Team.”

Linda’s prized possession awaits just beyond the French doors and deck. Elaborate gardens, greenhouse and a huge pond and waterfall. The pond came about when Howard learned his view would be diminished each winter when the lake is lowered five feet as part of the hydroelectric power function of the lake.

“We had to have a water feature,” he mused.

The pond’s expanse is breathtaking with its flowers in bloom, plants of various varieties, paths that meander around it and its soothing waterfall that cascades into a lower pool.

“I’ve had fun learning about all the different plants – what will survive here and what won’t,” Linda says. It is a place where she spends most of her time, keeping a watchful eye to ensure the beauty of it all. She points out the bird house she made at downtown Pell City’s Artscape Gallery, or she talks of the gatherings of fellow Pell City Garden Club members.

It’s all about the aesthetics she and Howard created together. “It’s like living in a tropical resort,” she says.

Discover October 2015 House

49 photos

Where imaginations have room to grow

Story by Elaine Hobson Miller
Photos by Jim Smothers

What child doesn’t want a playhouse? What adult didn’t want one as a child? It can be a fort where rebels shoot Nerf guns at intergalactic enemies, a Victorian doll house where little girls have tea parties, or a cabin with a loft for sleep-overs. The use of a playhouse, whether in the trees or on the ground, is limited only by a child’s imagination.

“I doodle on the dry-erase board and do my homework in it,” says Abby Hays, 12, ab the treehouse her dad built. “I like to play with my Strawberry Shortcake dolls,” says her sister, 8-1/2-year-old Emily.

Like many modern-day tree houses, the Hays’ version is built on pine posts because its owners lack a sturdy tree with the necessary split up the middle. Theirs is nestled between two oak trees on their Springville property, resting three sides on 4-by-4s planted in concrete deck piers and attached to a red oak on the fourth. It’s a two-story affair with steps that make a distinct turn at a small landing.

The treehouse is wider than it is deep, with a child-size table and chairs on one side and a small cabinet on the other to house dishes and other playthings. The bow and arrows that Emily uses for target practice hang on one wall near the cabinet. The girls like to hold tea parties with their friends and plan to put sleeping bags in the loft once their Dad has installed its trap door. Each girl has her own side in the loft, and there’s a secret compartment between its floor and the ceiling below. The ladder is attached to the back wall.

“Dad designed it, but we told him some of the things we wanted, like the French doors on the front and the shelves in the loft,” says Abby. “He wasn’t going to put any doors on it.”

Perry Hays used cedar for the exterior of the treehouse and rough-cut poplar for the front doors and the interior. He zigzagged the steps because he wanted them to go around a large water oak, and he set the main platform 10 feet off the ground.

“I always wanted a treehouse as a child,” says Perry, a self-employed carpenter.

Alex Follett of Pell City had been asking for a treehouse for some time when his parents, David and Katheryn, decided to have one built. “My wife and I had been talking,” says his dad. “We decided he is only 8 once, so we dipped into savings and surprised him for his birthday, which was in February.”

The Folletts gave builder Jonathan Hayes of Hayes Construction a crude pencil sketch on lined notebook paper that represented what they wanted. Hayes took the drawing and ran with it, and the Folletts, parents as well as son, couldn’t be happier with the results.

“This is where I keep all my weapons,” says Alex of his two-story playhouse. “I have two air soft guns, four pistols and two swords.” He calls the first floor his warring room, “where me and my friends plan,” while the second floor is his “sniping room.”

Both levels are enclosed, with two ways to enter the second floor: via wooden steps and a rope ladder. The rope version can also be accessed through a hatch in the floor of the second story, making it Alex’s escape route when avoiding enemy combatants. Alex plays there two or three hours on sunny days, he says. A friend or two will often join him.

The covered porch on the upper level features a ship’s wheel that Alex refers to as his “Stargate wheel,” and both levels have simple openings covered by wooden panels that open and close, rather than window panes. Under the porch is a pea-gravel playground with a seated swing and bar swing. A slide to the left of the 13 wooden steps offers another way down.

The 16-by-10-foot structure rests on a platform that’s 8 feet off the ground and anchored with 6-by-6-inch posts set in concrete. The entire house is made of pressure-treated pine, and Hayes custom-made the steps and hand rails. Total cost was $4,200, including the pea gravel and minor landscaping.

Tony Smith of Moody bought 10-year-old daughter, Anna, a Victorian-style playhouse from Coosa Valley Sales in Pell City. “I liked it because it looks like a real house, with a shingle roof and a loft where she and her friends can put their sleeping bags,” says Smith. “Anna loves it.”

The pink house sits on concrete blocks in a sloping yard, and Smith wants to put a ramp and steps on the higher end and lattice around the bottom. “I may eventually run power to it so we can put a little heater in it,” he says. “Once Anna outgrows it, we’ll turn it into a shed. It has a small front door and a big door at the end that you can’t see from the front. We can store pool cushions in it when she has finished with it.”

James David Slay, 8, and his brother Jason, 6, sons of Josh and Jennifer Slay of Moody, were the lucky recipients of the fort their grandmother, Christy Finch, won in a raffle at Shops of Grand River last year. The raffle benefitted the St. Clair CASA (Court-Appointed Special Advocates), a volunteer child advocacy program. “We call it our Alabama War House,” says James David. The top half on three sides can be opened and propped up, and the boys enjoy “shooting” two wooden machine guns mounted at one end.

“I like the loft, the windows and the fireman’s pole,” says 8-year-old Gabriel Rodriguez, naming the main features of the treehouse he and his 3-year-old brother, Matias, share at their grandmother’s house in Ashville. “I can’t wait until NaNa gets the slide put up.”

Built by Gary Liverett of Alpha Ranch, the 8-by-10-foot structure is set on 6-by-6-inch posts that are concreted 30 inches in the ground. Their grandmother’s yard slopes, so one side of the porch is 7.5 off the ground, while the other is 9 feet. Liverett made the 10-inch rough-sawn lap siding at his own sawmill. He framed the Plexiglass windows with pine boards, allowing the boys to see out whether the windows are open or closed. He also built a long slat in one side that opens out and down, through which the boys can shoot their Nerf guns. He also put in a stationary screened window in the loft to allow air to circulate.

“I used Plexiglass for the windows because it’s less likely to shatter and is more economical than glass,” Liverett explains. “The house has a 29-gauge, low-rib metal roof, and we hand cut the pickets for the porch.”

Liverett is letting the pressure-treated pine age before applying a stain to protect the wood from the weather. He used a galvanized 2-inch pipe that he had on hand for the fireman’s pole. He said he went over the contract price of $3,000 by $700 because it took much more time than he had estimated. “It has a lot of detail in it, and took as much time as some larger buildings,” he says. “I wouldn’t build another one for less than $4,000.”

Matias and his grandmother, who happens to be the writer of this article, have held a tea party in the house, using the same Fisher-Price tea set his mother had when she was his age. Gabriel, his grandmother and his friend Walker Griffith of Ashville have slept in the house twice, the first time in November before it was finished. “We almost froze to death,” Gabriel admits.

Holidays at the Capps
house a special treat

Story by Elaine Hobson Miller
Photos by Michael Callahan

When Deanna Capps and her late husband, Curtis, were planning their new house, they wanted something light and airy that would bring the outdoors inside.

Curtis didn’t have a whit of architectural training, yet designed a two-bedroom, three-and-a-half-bath home with spacious rooms that flow easily from one to another. Although Deanna has changed the function of a couple of those rooms, the design retains its original intent.

“This house floats” is the way Deanna describes it. “I like to entertain, and people can float from one room to another.”

It’s difficult to describe the style of the house. With its stone steps and pillars, stucco walls, wide, wrap-around porch and clerestory windows, Craftsman cottage meets Mediterranean villa comes to mind. Deanna says she doesn’t have a theme to her decor, either. She likes to mix things up so she doesn’t get bored. That’s why some kitchen cabinets are brown, some are black. Some drawer pulls are in the shape of roosters, others are plain. Kitchen counter-tops are granite and marble in three different color combinations.

African animals are repeated, but not enough to become a theme. The great room is home to a mother elephant and her baby, an adult giraffe and a zebra. A baby giraffe guards the loft bedroom. There’s a ceiling fan with pond-frond blades in almost every room. And everywhere, on almost every wall, is Deanna’s artwork. Three-dimensional musical instruments hang over the piano in the Great Room, while landscapes, animals, angels and crosses are everywhere.

“Angels are my signature,” she says. “I started painting when my husband was sick. It kept me busy and my mind occupied on spiritual things.” Curtis Capps, who owned Royal Foods next door to the house, died in July of 2013 after a two-and-a-half-year illness.

Deanna’s right about the house floating. The great room that runs the width of the front leads into the eat-in kitchen, which leads to a hall that’s flanked by pantries the size of small bedrooms. Down that hall is the master bedroom. A series of pocket doors open the bedroom into a bath, the bath into another bedroom, and that bedroom into a back hallway that, in turn, leads to a bathroom-cum-closet and large laundry room. Of course, guests don’t wander into the master bath. But if they did, they could hold a party in that room alone.

“The master bathroom is bigger than my bedroom,” Deanna admits.

A 109-year-old grand piano dominates one side of the great room. A whimsical polyresin butler stands silently in one corner, between the powder room and the stairway leading to the loft. “He doesn’t wait on anybody, he just holds our instruments,” Deanna says, pointing to the bowed psaltery in his outstretched hands.

A long, farmhouse table separates the seating area from the music area. While the table seats 10, Deanna frequently sets up smaller tables to accommodate larger crowds. “I used to bring folks home from church for Sunday dinner, to get to know them,” she says. Her church is First United Methodist of Pell City, where Deanna is keyboardist for the contemporary service.

The seating area has a red leather couch and two matching love seats that face a stone fireplace with the television mounted into the stone above it. “We don’t have a problem with the piano at one end and TV at the other, because we don’t use both at the same time,” Deanna says.

A powder room under the stairs features a crown bowl with bamboo-style faucet and fixtures and has faux-painted walls with a ceiling of gold and gold leaves. Local artist Laura Darnell painted the twig-themed red wall behind the sideboard next to the powder room door to pick up the red in the sideboard.

Overlooking the Great Room is a loft bedroom with twin “swing beds,” as Deanna describes them. The beds are held to the ceiling by chains, but are also attached to a wall and held up by floor posts. Sateen quilts with gold-threaded patches of bright turquoise, hot pink, blue and orange cover the beds, while a Tiffany-style lamp tops a small table at each head. A bath and closet are at the far end of the loft. “The grandchildren always loved this room,” Deanna says. “They’re 18 and 20 now, but they still use it when they come to visit.”

In the kitchen, pendant lights with glass prisms hang over a bar-height table. In fact, the house is full of prisms, another way of bringing light inside. “The glass in the front door was cut to reflect lights,” Deanna says. “It’s particularly beautiful at night when car lights reflect as colors. The window above the front door has prisms around its perimeter, and the kitchen blinds are silver-reflective, like metal. I can sit in my breakfast nook and see who is coming up the drive by looking in the window next to it.”

The slate flooring starts in the kitchen, then continues through the hallway and into the pantries. It’s repeated in the master bath and dressing room, the back hallway and laundry room. One of those pantries measures 10 feet by 7 feet and serves as a preparation and clean-up area when Deanna hosts dinner parties. It has an ice maker, sink, dishwasher, toaster-oven and other small appliances. “It’s like a second kitchen,” Deanna says. “The prep and clean-up can be done in here, which cuts down on the visible mess and leaves the main kitchen free for serving people.” Across the hall is the butler’s pantry, with a second refrigerator and storage for china and glassware.

The hallway leads into the master bedroom, which Deanna also uses as her office. It has a curved desk for her computer and shelves in one corner, and twin, horizontally-mounted Bogie fans Deanna never uses. “They’re strictly for looks,” she says. “I’m afraid to use them, because they aren’t balanced.”

Dominating the bedroom is the mural that covers one wall. Another creation by Laura Darnell, whose signature is Genesis. It’s a blue sky with fluffy white clouds and flying doves. Deanna’s own small painting of an angel, which is her signature, repeats the sky motif in such a way the painting melts into wall, as if they were one.

The master bathroom features not only his-and-hers sinks and vanities, but his-and-hers toilets, each in its own little marble cubicle with twig sconces. The double shower is large enough to dance in, and Deanna recently removed a leaky hot tub from one corner of the bathroom to add a walk-in tub.

Behind the bath is what Deanna calls her Pink Room. Originally a sitting room, it became Curtis’s sickroom after he suffered a stroke. Pink was Curtis’s favorite color, so after he died, Deanna moved out the hospital bed and moved in iron twin beds with pink bedspreads. The beds face an electronic keyboard where Deanna sometimes practices for Sunday morning worship in the middle of the night when she can’t sleep.

“It soothes my soul,” she says.

Behind the keyboard is the carport that the Capps screened in to become a sunroom before Curtis died so Deanna could wheel him through the French doors to enjoy the fresh air and scenery. Off the back hall is the laundry room and a former bathroom that she turned into a closet. “I needed storage space more than another bath,” she explains.

Outside, behind the screened carport, Deanna has an outbuilding that she calls her flower house. It’s where she stores seasonal decorations and silk floral arrangements, which she designs herself. She normally decorates for Christmas before Thanksgiving, and leaves the decorations up until February. Why?

“Because I enjoy them,” she says.

Deanna Capps House

68 photos