A Wooded Tennessee Retreat

Inveterate collector Travis Robeson planned to build a one-room cabin in Tennessee hunt country—until his stash of salvaged lumber and stone outgrew the blueprint. Which is how his whole family wound up with a cozy cabin.

Hunting and Gathering

Sometimes even the humblest task can balloon into a humongous project. Tidying a cupboard, for instance, provides an excuse to install spice racks. So it was for Travis and Katherine Robeson when they started clearing out the garage at their Franklin, Tennessee, home. What began as an innocent attempt at organization resulted in a country house built from scratch.

"I'm a collector. I can't help it," says Travis of how the garage got so overstuffed in the first place. But it was another obsession—hunting—that inspired him to draw upon his "collections" and raise a one-room cabin on 57 wooded acres south of town.

In this photo: An industrial worktable, topped with custom-cut glass, serves as the kitchen's island; the stools were also rescued from a factory. A vintage zinc icebox offers hidden storage, while open Douglas-fir shelves hold dishes and cookware. The stainless steel stove is Jenn-Air.

Eating Area

The land came first. One fall day, Travis, a realtor, visited a property that adjoined acreage his father had recently acquired. "The sugar maples were the same brilliant orange as the colors of the University of Tennessee, where Katherine and I met," he recalls. Then he and Katherine discovered they were expecting, and the blueprint for that modest one-room shack expanded to a 1,300-square-foot family retreat. They now have two children: a son, 5, and daughter, 2.

In this photo: Marlowe, a Scottish terrier, joins Katherine and the kids at a hand-carved dining table from Travis's parents' antiques shop. The elder Robesons bought the chairs during a trip to Montana.

Bright idea: Mounted on a wall, hard-working tools like these wooden foundry molds double as striking art.

Living Room

To construct the cabin, Travis had to supplement the cache in his garage. "I wanted the cabin to look as if it had been sitting here for a century," he says of the search for "reclaimed, local, honest materials that tell the story of their heritage." He found a stack of numbered poplar logs that had once been another cabin, and pine boards from an abandoned grain mill that were "beautifully peppered with worm holes and square-head nails." To put it all together, Travis hired area craftsmen schooled in the methods of yesteryear.

In this photo: Carved-wood cookie molds and burlap ribbon decorate the living room tree.

Mantel

Composed of Tennessee rock and reclaimed poplar, the living room's hearth hosts one of Travis's hunting trophies, as well as stockings sewn from linen.

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