If These Walls Could Talk

By Ann Mitchell
Photos by Bill Thrash

If these walls could talk, they'd say “thank you” to E. Stone Miller. So would the doors, the floors, the 1895 bathtub, the headboards on the beds, the Italian cruise ship fixtures, the bank-vault doors on the wine cellar, the RCA president’s bookshelves, a number of desks, countless tables and the porch swing. In fact, just about every inch of the Pawleys Island Realtor’s remarkable home owes its life to him. From the hand-hewn beams holding up the porch to the surrounds over the doors, Miller saved them all.

It’s been about 20 years since Miller, the broker in charge at Litchfield Real Estate, started scrounging, scavenging and stashing away architectural antiques. His grandfather’s farm at Pamplico on the Pee Dee River, an old bank building in Andrews, the Savoy Hotel in London: All yielded hand-me-downs — artifacts that someone else was done with, but Miller had plenty of use for.

“I’ve always gone for the junkier stuff,” he says. He points to three richly polished, solid hardwood doors in a ground floor hallway. “You can get great old doors like this for about $30 but they’re painted, so you can’t always tell what you’ve got.”

And that’s what makes the house a wonder and an adventure.

Miller and his wife, Harriett, broke ground on their new home about two years ago. The property is the old Waverly Rice Mill site, perched at the edge of Waverly Creek just a johnboat ride from the Intracoastal Waterway. It took a year and seven months to finish the construction, Miller says. “Unique” is an overused word, but in this case it fits exactly — there simply isn’t any other house around that’s quite like this one.

Some of the items have been part of the Millers’ former homes, but a number of things spent years in storage. Four mini-warehouses, two garages and a barn on the family farm were all pressed into service storing beams, floors, bricks — 50,000 of them from an old train station in Florence — and a wall. Yes, an entire wall that Miller had flown over from England to use in his family room.

Miller’s travels have resulted in a number of such finds, but friends and acquaintances close to home who know his interest in architectural antiques have been great resources as well. They’ll call him to let him know that an old family barn, home or business office is being dismantled and invite him to recover any parts of it that he might want. They know the respect, care and passion Miller has for the craftsmanship and history of each segment of board, each barn door, each brick — and they know that in his hands, it will find a new and frequently unexpected use.

“It’s like they used to say about slaughtering a pig,” Miller says. “They used all of the pig — I use all of the house.”

Chapman Construction of Pawleys Island served as the general contractor. Frasier Wall Design & Planning based the plans for the home on photos of Miller’s grandmother’s house in Claussen, a community near Florence. There are antique heart pine floors throughout from the family farm at Pamplico. Only one door in the whole house — the one leading onto the back porch — is new.

On the ground level, underneath the main living space, is a comfortable, masculine den with a well-stuffed couch and chairs set around a fireplace. What now is the ceiling was once the floor of a log barn. The den connects to son Stone’s bedroom and bathroom. The headboard on the bed is made of unpainted doors — with one of the doorknobs still in place.

Heavy old-fashioned country-store doors and unfinished heart pine floors lead the way to the wine cellar. The wrought iron gate guarding the cellar is from an old bank in Florence and weighs about 250 pounds, Miller says.

The sunny dining room on the main floor, like many of the rooms, has a transom over the door. Part of the challenge of using so many old doors from so many locales is that their sizes don’t match, which tends to throw the interior out of balance from a visual standpoint when you’re standing at the front door looking down the hallway that runs the width of the home and leads out onto the porch overlooking the creek. Miller and his contractors solved the problem by having transoms custom-made in a variety of heights. They create the impression, for the eye, that the height of all the doors is the same.

The Millers’ spacious kitchen features a large island with antique bar stools and wormy chestnut cabinets crafted out of the remains of an old barn in North Carolina. On one wall is a fireplace with a large mirror hanging over the old cypress mantel. But a bit of magic lurks: Miller ducks into a hallway beside the fireplace, pulls on a chain supporting several window weights, and voila! Up goes the fireplace mirror, revealing a TV stashed neatly inside a small recess.

Just off the kitchen is a marbletopped counter that serves as a bar. Miller says he was heading out of an antiques shop in Florida several years ago when he spotted the marble slab, about to be discarded because it was broken. “The lady in the store didn’t know it was for sale, but it was,” he says with a smile. He got it for a song. As luck would have it, it was just the right fit for the spot when the Millers were building their home.

Across from the bar is a walkin pantry — although in this case, “climb-in pantry” is more accurate. Inside the closet, wooden shelves line the walls on three sides, all the way to the ceiling. Sturdy, wide, ladderstyle steps are built into the shelves so you can walk up as far as you need, see everything on the shelves around you, and climb safely back down. When Miller jokingly complained that installing the stairs created some wasted space that could have gone for storage, Steve Banta of PI Woodworks obliged by building several neat protruding storage racks for the inside of the pantry door.

A beautifully paneled library and study are located to the right of the front door. The columns, bookshelves and pocket doors came out of a former offi ce used by the president of RCA, Miller says. He had them in storage for seven years before being able to incorporate them into his home.

The family room is home to the wall purchased in England — in fact, the room was built around the wall. Miller says the craftsmen who took the wall apart for shipping insisted on coming to Pawleys Island and reassembling it themselves because they didn’t trust anyone else to do job right. In the center of the wall is a fi replace fl anked by brass fi xtures salvaged from an Italian cruise liner.

The fi rst-floor master bedroom has walnut doors, a separate seating area with a fi replace and TV, and a small offi ce that opens off the seating area. In the master bath are elegant matching wardrobes that the Millers found in Pennsylvania. The conversation piece in the bathroom is the copper bathtub. Miller found it at the Metrolina antiques extravaganza in Charlotte and it was yellow and red with three parakeets painted on the side. When it was stripped and restored, an engraving showed up: “1895 Iron Clad Tub Company, New York.”

The second floor of the Millers’ home includes 13-year-old Lydia’s room and bathroom, done in white, pinks and minty green. There’s room for a second smaller bed when a friend wants to stay over. Another bedroom upstairs offers an elegant four-poster bed and a striking view out onto Waverly Creek.

Also upstairs is a third bedroom, a small den with a TV, a walk-in attic/ storage room and a room where Harriett works on artistic projects.

All the doors and surrounds on the second fl oor were recovered from a parsonage in upstate New York, Miller says. Like so many other components of the house, they were thought to have reached the end of their useful life — until E. Stone Miller made them new again.

If these doors and surrounds could talk, they’d say “thank you” — and they just might add an “Amen!”

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