“I designed this cabin with no client in mind,” says Greg McGuffey, president of Earthtone Builders. “Rather, it was a fun opportunity for me to design something I’d simply been dreaming of. It became an evening ritual to work on it while relaxing at home.” But once the cabin design was finished, McGuffey knew it had to be built.
McGuffey and his wife Aubrie had spent months searching for a cabin they could purchase as an investment. When it wasn’t being used as a vacation rental, it was where they hoped to escape for relaxing weekends. The search, however, came up empty. “Most of what we found were 1960s-era cabins in pretty rough shape and very energy inefficient,” says McGuffey.
Despite that setback, he wasn’t discouraged. “It inspired me to draw something I would love to find — a perfect mountain cabin.” Still intending to build it as a vacation rental, the McGuffeys began looking for land.
He and his wife recently closed on 8.5 wooded acres near Weaverville. Situated between two streams, it has springs and a mountain view. McGuffey describes the rural site as “timeless in its appeal,” sloping from the top of a ridge to a bottom strewn with “large, mossy boulders.”
McGuffey studied design and construction while living in Taos, New Mexico, in the mid-1990s. He says he remains influenced by that area’s vernacular Earthships (passive-solar structures generally made of earth-packed tires and other recycled materials) and other alternative building styles, including those of the region’s indigenous people.
He eventually moved to Asheville, where he founded Earthtone Builders in 2003 and Earthtone Design Studio in 2005, making an early mark in the local green-building industry. In 2015, he met Chilean architect Felipe Santander, who had recently moved to Asheville from San Francisco. The two soon discovered they shared a similar design philosophy, accompanied by a deep-felt desire to create homes at once attractive and sustainable.
In the years since, McGuffey and Santander have collaborated on several custom projects. In fact, McGuffey and his wife currently live in a home that was the first design project he and Santander worked on together. And in 2016, Earthtone won the Innovative Home Design award from the Asheville Home Builders Association for the “Fenner House.” They’re now combining their talents to make McGuffey’s new mountain A-frame cabin a reality.
“When Greg showed me the preliminary drawings, I was very excited,” says Santander. “I grew up in a neighborhood in Chile where A-frames were very popular, and I’ve always wanted to design one. The design maximizes the interior space, including dormers and skylights that create the feeling of a larger home, while keeping it cozy and integrated with the surroundings.”
The roughly 1,200-square-foot south-facing cabin will contain two bedrooms, 2.5 baths, and an extra loft-style bedroom, with a 24-foot ceiling height in the main room. The home is designed to be placed on any type of foundation, says McGuffey, but his will have a full daylight basement, providing more living space below.
Specialists in green homes, McGuffey and Santander are designing the cabin so it can be certified as energy efficient by Green Built Alliance. Its features will include high-performance insulation, double-pane insulated windows, Energy Star appliances, thoughtful site location, the use of trees from the property for flooring and for the exterior gable ends, and utilization of the property’s two springs for drinking water. McGuffey also intends to install solar panels on the roof so the cabin can also snag a “net-zero” energy certification.
“One of the benefits of the iconic A-frame,” explains McGuffey, “is that the majority of the home is simply roof with wide overhangs, therefore keeping the exterior of the cabin very low maintenance.”
While the focus of Earthtone is residential, McGuffey and Santander will design anything: “Felipe is currently working on a yoga pavilion concept, and I’m working on a holistic healing center.”
McGuffey says the idea of using his own A-frame as a vacation rental will have to wait. “It will most likely become our primary residence for a while. We currently live in West Asheville and love it, but we are [also] loving the idea of living in the woods.”
Greg McGuffey, residential designer and general contractor; Felipe Santander, architect, Earthtone Builders and Earthtone Design Studio, Asheville. For more information, call 828-230-4460 or see earthtonebuilders.com or earthtonedesignstudio.com.