Tracy Dix can still recall the moment she fell in love with the two-bedroom cottage perched on the coast of Wrightsville Beach. “When I walked up, I could look through the windows and see the ocean, and I thought, ‘This is it,’ ” she says. Tracy and her husband, Todd, had been searching for a vacation home on the island for years; they’d been going to Wrightsville with their two children, now grown, for more than three decades, and dreamed of moving there permanently one day.
The home was in an ideal location. It offered access to a private beach, and, perched on a staggered lot, boasted unimpeded views of the Atlantic Ocean. But it was also too small for the family of four, and, with only one floor above the garage level, it wasn’t high enough to see farther down the beach. “To really capture the view, we had to have another story with more windows,” says Tracy. “We knew from the beginning that we would have to build a new house.”
The Dix’s entrusted Toby Keeton of Kersting Architecture with the job of building their dream home, which would be thoroughly inspired by midcenturymodern architecture. Like many beach houses, the home was designed with a reverse floor plan—the main living spaces were on the uppermost floor to take advantage of the view. In fact, one of Keeton’s main priorities was marrying the desire for panoramic views of the beach with a need for privacy. “We spent a lot of time curating the house so that you can see out, but people can’t see in,” he says. To that end, when designing the first-floor deck, the height allows the homeowners to take in the views while the nearby dune shields them from fellow beachgoers. He also oriented the home in such a way that maximized airflow, allowing the southwestern breeze to sweep across the wraparound deck.
Inside, the living room is lined with floor-to-ceiling windows to take advantage of the calming views of the ocean. Above, rows of clerestory windows allow more sunlight to filter through the first floor. Tasked with designing the interiors, Leslie Stachowicz of Peridot Interiors says, “The home exists so seamlessly with nature that one of the main goals was to enhance the house’s features, not compete with them. We wanted that light, airy, warm feeling, bringing the outdoors in.”
In the dining room, for instance, Stachowicz chose not to put a rug under the dining room table, preferring to let the eye travel from the floors to the soaring cypress ceiling above. “We wanted this grand space and walkway without any kind of visual or physical impairment,” she says. In the office, which doubles as a guest bedroom, a Murphy bed folds out of a midcentury-modern–inspired open shelving unit, complete with horsehair grass cloth wallpaper. She also took inspiration from one of Tracy’s favorite pieces of ar —a painting of a turtle she found at a local restaurant, which now hangs in the hallway—and implemented a palette of aqua and turquoise throughout the home.
While construction on the house took about two years, the result was worth the wait. Tracy and Todd, who live in Greensboro, plan to move to Wrightsville Beach permanently within a few years. Until then, “Our goal is to be there as much as possible,” says Tracy. They entertain there often, and their children visit frequently. “We’ve had this dream for a long, long time. This is our forever home, and it’s just perfect.”
