Designer Caroline Brackett poured her heart and her expertise into a nineteenth-century farm.
As the dirt crunched beneath the tires on the long, winding road, a home seemingly emerged from the horizon lined with mountains beyond. There, amongst the unplowed, unkempt fields of the 106-acre property, stood an 1870s homestead in complete disrepair. There was no electricity. No insulation. And what plumbing existed needed to be completely replaced. And Caroline Brackett loved it.
The designer and her then-fiancé, Jodah Mullinax, a builder, had been searching for land—lots of it—“to raise animals and farm and just get away,” says Brackett. Located in Pickens, South Carolina, just forty-five minutes from downtown Greenville, the home checked all the boxes for the couple. “When I was living in Greenville and driving to the lake I’d see these houses on beautiful hills on all of this land with no one else around,” says Brackett. “And I just loved that. There’s always been this feeling in my gut that that’s what I needed at some point in my life. And for my kids. I wanted my kids to have the opportunity to experience this. The land. The animals. The exploring.”
The couple closed on the home in 2020 and soon began restoring the nineteenth-century structure, which they named Midway Farm, starting with the upstairs. With Mullinax’s builder and construction background coupled with Brackett’s talent with architectural details and interior design, the duo began transforming the home piece by piece, adding the basic necessities of plumbing, electrical, and HVAC. They tore out laminate paneling, which uncovered a treasure trove of original wood: refinishing the floors revealed stunning hand-planed heart pine boards likely hewn from trees on the land.
Brackett and Mullinax had just begun working on the downstairs of the home when tragedy struck. On Thanksgiving Day 2021, Mullinax was in a traffic accident that took his life. Now alone with her three kids, dozens of animals, a farm, and an unfinished home with a vision for the latter so intertwined with her lost partner, Brackett was unsure about what to do. “I knew, more than anything, that Jodah would want me to finish this home and bring all of our dreams to life. So that’s what I focused on while I mourned the loss of what we dreamed of building together.”
The interior design was clear for Brackett the moment she and Mullinax saw the home. “For me, there was no other way to decorate it,” she says. From Brevard, North Carolina, to a plantation in Virginia and everywhere in between, the designer scoured the Southeast and sites like 1st Dibs for antiques and pieces that somehow struck the right note. “I did not want it to feel like a modern farmhouse. I wanted it to have a lot of charm and character and stay true to the age of the house.”
That proved challenging for the designer, whose work toes the line between traditional and modern. “I wanted it to feel like an English farmhouse—comfortable and layered and old and curated,” she says. Mixing old with new, Brackett paired buffalo check with florals, updated lighting from Currey & Company and Visual Comfort coupled with original fixtures rewired to feel new, and incorporated swivel chairs from Hickory Chair juxtaposed with an antique sideboard. The home was updated from top to bottom, and with Brackett’s impressive eye for design, she created a home that feels elevated and comfortable. The result was exactly what she and Mullinax envisioned.
Midway Farm has become a place of solace for the designer and her three kids, who have loved and lost in the home. It’s the former, though, that Brackett leans into. “I love the comfort of this home,” she explains. “There are holes and knots in it. It’s not perfect by any means, but that’s why I love it.”
