Feature: Naturally Resourceful

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Being open to change and possibility is what initially led Jennifer and Mike from Minneapolis to the Lowcountry in 1994. Mike, a former industrial engineer, had made a mid-career s hift to teaching, and he and Jennifer wanted a more affordable, mellow, and outdoor-oriented locale, either in the mountains or by the coast. The water won. After five years in old Mount Pleasant, the couple happened upon this scrubby lot nestled between the Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge and the Francis Marion National Forest, where pines and gum trees were still struggling to regain their post-Hugo ground. When they drove up, they knew their search for a back-to-nature place to raise their family had ended. “For years I had this mental image of what I wanted,” says Jennifer. “I told Mike, ‘This is it.’” The community deep-water dock with a vista of 64,000 acres of protected waterfront sealed the deal.

Retro Rural

Today the surrounding forest is denser with tall, healthy trees and there are a few more houses in the neighborhood (but only a few). Likewise, Jennifer and Mike’s home continues to evolve as a colorful, mod cabin-in-the-woods—part cozy home and play space and part retro-rural, eco-fun statement affirming their family values of simplicity, creativity, and sustainability. Here, their two daughters, Elsa, nine, and Maya, five, enjoy a wonderland of enchanted woods and rope swings, butterfly gardens and chicken coops, even an indoor tiki-hut hideout, complete with sliding board. With ample screened porches, various garden nooks, and lots of play and work zones tucked beneath the elevated house, the emphasis is on open-air living. Inside, a halo of high windows at the second-floor loft streams forest-dappled light and natural cross ventilation into the open family room/kitchen below. And everywhere, from Jennifer’s homemade frame for a treasured Woody Guthrie poster, to the tree branch that doubles as an instrument stand, to Mike’s fine-tuned song rotation (Dylan, Neil Young, Lucinda Williams…), an inspired, personal flair is evident.

From the outset, Jennifer and Mike balanced their budget constraints with unconstricted creativity. They were hands-on collaborators with both the house design and construction, adapting a set of stock plans to suit their needs and the demands of the lot, then hiring Bill Bennett of Bennett Builders, Inc., to bring it to fruition. “Bill just ran with it,” says Mike. “Our working relationship was much like an ongoing conversation. Bill would ask, ‘What are you thinking for this?’ and we’d discuss options for the front steps and railings, or we’d say that we’d like to do the kitchen ceiling ourselves, and he’d say ‘Go for it.’”

“Bill was fine with letting us do as much as possible,” adds Jennifer, now the power-tool queen. “When he saw me tackling the window seat with a hammer, he offered his nail gun. Not wanting to show my ineptitude, I said ‘No thanks,’ but he insisted on handing it over and giving me an impromptu lesson.”

In addition to mastering the nail gun, Jennifer selected the warm earth-toned color scheme and did all the interior painting, including going to the paint store to hand-mix the bold, berry red stain for the kitchen cabinets. “When I couldn’t grasp the color she was describing, Jennifer went into the woods, came back with a wild berry, and smeared it on a board,” recalls Bill Bennett. “Now that’s getting in touch with nature!” (After staining the first one, the cabinet-maker asked, “Are you sure about this?”) She special-ordered cork flooring from Pennsylvania, since few eco-friendly materials were locally available at the time, and laid the diamond pattern without measuring it out. “I’m visual,” Jennifer says. “I didn’t sketch a plan; my plan was, ‘I’m going to do it, and it’s going to look great.’ I may have misjudged an angle or two,” she admits, “but nothing a well-placed table can’t hide!”

Reclaim, Recycle, Recreate

The Mathis/Cline home exudes a delightfully eclectic personality. Eschewing a prefab Rooms-To-Go mentality, Jennifer combines funky finds to create a rooms-to-know ambiance, with the former life of many furnishings and fixtures—like old pressed-tin ceiling tiles turned chimney decor or the lamp table rescued from the dump—whispering their stories, adding interest and mystery to the mix. All the interior doors were reclaimed from older homes or flea markets, including two dramatic arched doors leading out to the screened porch that were once large dome windows cut down to size—a find from Jennifer’s sister in Baltimore. An equally inventive touch is the bright red screened door that bids welcome to Elsa’s cottage-themed bedroom.

Jennifer and Mike applied their waste-not, want-not philosophy liberally, using recycled or sustainable building materials whenever possible and carefully allocating square-footage. “I’m a big-believer in using all available space,” says Jennifer, who, with some beadboard and ingenuity, carved an office nook out of the laundry closet (relocating the washer/dryer to the girls’ bathroom), and did the same to make a built-in homework haven for daughter Maya’s room (re-using the removed countertop as the desktop).

To reduce landfill impact, Jennifer and Mike asked the contractor to salvage all scrap lumber during construction, and over the years they’ve transformed the resulting heap, now almost gone, into homemade Adirondack chairs for the garden, a delightful pretend kitchen for the girls (inspired by a sink discovered by the roadside), and an enclosed under-the-house workshop (incorporating windows found at the dump) where Jennifer makes eclectic furniture out of the scrap pile, and thus the recycled wood pile itself goes full circle.

The family’s earthy ethic extends beyond their home and garden and into the community around them. In addition to leading the Ecology Club at Charles Pinckney Elementary School, Mike is promoting the use of washable lunch trays, rather than disposable ones, in school cafeterias across the district. Jennifer has recently launched “The Little Green Bag Project,” as a means of finally squelching the “paper or plastic” dilemma. She has signed on—and continues to enlist—local businesses to sponsor hundreds of durable, reusable shopping bags (made from recycled materials), which people can decorate with their children’s or their own artwork. As advocates for sustainability, both mom and dad find inspiration and sustenance for their work in their family’s surroundings. “I look out my window at the peace and beauty of the woods, and I’m glad to be home,” sa