Inside Rhett & Jessie McLaughlin’s Whimsical North Carolina Cabin

[door thuds]

Hey AD,

welcome to our North Carolina cabin in the woods.

You know, you really should talk to my wife, Jessie,

about this though,

I swear she was here just a moment ago.

Here I am.

Come on in, y'all, we're so happy to have you.

She's so little, sometimes she goes missing.

[bright music]

So we're based in Los Angeles, California

where we make Good Mythical Morning

and everything else at Mythical Entertainment,

but both of us,

have all of our family, here in North Carolina.

We've been married a long time, coming up on 24 years.

Is that how long it's been?

It feels like 24 months. It felt like 24 days.

It feels like we're still on honeymoon.

24 minutes. So we wanted to get a place,

you know, put down a root or two,

or some logs,

it's a log cabin. Some big logs,

they're very big logs.

I'm an interior designer, so when I saw this,

I immediately had a big vision for it.

When you walk into this house,

it feels like a storybook or a fairytale,

and I wanted people to not know

when they are or where they are,

like it's- You wanted people

to feel disoriented. Yeah, exactly, exactly.

One of my favorite things in the house is this clock,

it was my grandma's.

It sat in the entryway of her home

and every time I opened her door, I saw this clock.

And she passed away, she would've been 100 this year,

but it's really special to me,

and there are touches of my grandma

all throughout the house.

I've got her rugs and items that I saw in her house daily,

and so it's really special to me to feel her here.

It's always 8:09 in this house,

no matter when... We have not gotten-

What time is it, 8:09.

We haven't gotten the clock fixed.

It's 8:09 PM, AM, I don't know,

you're disoriented right now.

Maybe 8:09 is a special time.

These pieces are from a local antique shop

that I love, Whitehall Antiques,

and these are actually made from old frames,

pieces of frames that didn't get used.

Each one is unique, and then they find little trinkets

to put on each frame.

And so people have huge collections,

I'm just starting mine, but they're called museum bees

and they make me really happy.

I hope to have this whole wall filled someday.

And who put them on the wall in that pattern?

Is he here?

Is it me?

Yes, I did.

And we made it through that afternoon.

It was a little rough. What?

No, it was wonderful There were some words

back and forth. It was a bunny experience.

We made it.

[upbeat music]

This is the kitchen, which is probably the room

that was transformed the most from what it looked like.

When Jessie first described this to me, I was like,

I don't understand what you're talking about.

You're gonna have to show it to me.

And I didn't understand until I saw it.

But I showed it to you a lot

because I remember I would show you each new iteration

of the drawing and you would say,

We're still working on this?

Yeah. You're still not done.

When I was looking at all

of this incredible art Novo carving, we wanted

to figure out a way to kinda make that happen here,

put some accent pieces, give it some oomph with molding.

This area frames the stove so beautifully

and fills a little bit like a window looking out

into nature.

The first thing that I found that kind of sent me on my way

with this kitchen was this incredible Brazilian quartzite.

When I saw this stone,

I thought about all the trees in North Carolina.

It's known as being a super green state.

Jessie looked at so many pieces of stone

to make this decision.

I honestly don't know what she's looking for

when she goes and looks at the stone.

It's a stone's je ne sais quoi.

I'm gonna tell you right now, the only question

that I have when I look at a piece of stone is,

Can you make love on that?

And the answer is yes, you can.

You can make love on this stone

and you can make love on this stone.

[Director] Period, that's what the people wanna know.

[upbeat music]

This is the living room, which is my favorite room

because this is the room where you can say,

I am definitely in a log cabin.

You see basically the entire structure.

I thought I was gonna be a structural engineer at one point.

I'm not, but I can still appreciate a structure.

The other thing you said in this room was

we had this wall hanging,

and I was just as a very logical person, I thought,

Okay, we have a rectangular space,

let's put the wall hanging that is rectangular shaped

inside of it to fit and fill the space in this logical way.

And you were like,

How about we do it 90 degrees from that?

Yeah. And that's

when I just learned that I should just get on the ladder

and say, What should I do, where should I put this?

That's good, baby. I mean, you made-

It took 24 years- The best decision.

Here we are.

This is actually a pillow that I designed.

It's called the Didis Pillow,

'cause that's what all the grandkids call my mom Phyllis.

She's designed some incredible spaces

and she taught me what a good pillow is,

that it's gonna keep its shape, it's got some interest,

we've got these tassels,

and I love the fact that I have something to honor my mom

because I wouldn't be doing any of this without her.

I wanted an impressive centerpiece to this living room,

these really high ceilings.

I wanted a big ass fireplace, so we did that.

I thought this was an opportunity to bring in a little light

with this limestone.

This mantle is a whole other story.

I've been on a journey with this mantle.

I ran across it at High Point Market.

And originally this thing was just barely big enough

to cover the opening.

Well, I found a guy who found a guy.

Oh, okay. Who did some just

incredible handy work, Adam, to make this.

He even sliced it in half

because I was asking him to do magic,

and that's what he did, he did magic.

[upbeat music]

Welcome to the primary bedroom.

We've been dealing with a lot

of pests since we bought this house.

It's true.

There's so many things. So many things.

Carpenter beads, wasps of two varieties,

we've had two bats in here.

We're no longer living with creatures.

Yeah, so we have definitely become one with nature

and it is very difficult to keep them out

of a log cabin is something that we've learned.

There is one tenant that we have not kicked out,

I discovered it a few days ago.

Birds have made a nest right outside of the dining room

and it's so fun to watch them.

I keep cleaning up bird poop.

But birds are welcome.

It's really a losing battle. Birds are welcome.

Yes, birds are welcome here.

When I was looking at different wallpapers

and started picking them out

and seeing how they all worked together, I showed Rhett,

and your favorite one was this one.

And that's how it ended up here in the primary suite.

I love this wallpaper.

It also makes you feel like you are in nature

when you are battling yellow jackets,

you feel like you never left the forest.

When we were planning this bedroom out,

it had a very tiny bathroom.

So we took what was the laundry room

right beside the bathroom, opened up the bathroom.

It still didn't make for the largest bathroom ever,

it's better than our bathroom in LA for sure.

But I really wanted a tub

and we could not fit a tub in there.

And I had always had this dream anyway

of having a tub in the bedroom.

I think that, that's very romantic,

it feels like a storybook.

This is a stunner that I found at High Point Market,

one of the vintage dealers there.

It was actually hiding behind a lot

of other pieces of furniture

and I saw some little glimpses of it and I was like,

What is that?

And so they pulled the other furniture back

and I'm just in awe of the artistry.

This marketery is something

that you don't see in furniture nowadays.

And this continues the nature theme.

You have these sweet turtle doves right here.

I'm assuming that's what they are,

I don't know if they're really turtle doves.

So this is the couch

that I sit on when I do not wanna make eye contact

with her when she's lying in the bed, which,

I mean, every once in a while,

that's something we're into. It's true,

sometimes we need to not make eye contact.

We just wanna talk to each other but not see each other.

I thought this was a great way to incorporate some plaid.

I'm always concerned about being too on the nose

in a log cabin.

So I didn't want a lot of plaid,

but a little plaid and a funky colorway and mohair,

I can do that.

We wanted this to be the primary bedroom

because of this balcony.

It has its own balcony, come on out here with us.

Now you're out in the wildlife, right?

If you come out here at night

and you just stare into these woods,

you'll see all these sets of glowing eyes.

The first time I saw it, I was like,

There's children of the woods looking at us,

and it's just deer.

The way that their eyes reflect back light

from the house is crazy

and there'll be like 30 or 40 deer just out-

Pretty. In these woods.

[upbeat music]

This is the loft, and this is where I'm gonna tell you,

'cause she won't tell you about the genius

that is Jessie Lane Interiors.

Okay, this is Leonardo the Jessie, she's an adventure.

Look, it's a sofa that can turn into a bed.

And she made this and it's called the Shacha.

It is, it's named after my sister.

I made it because when my sister was coming

to visit us in LA, I wanted her to have a bed

that actually felt like a bed,

but there wasn't anything in the market that was like that,

that actually looked like a bed when it popped out.

It also looked like the kind of sofa

that you thought was cool, you know?

Absolutely. But she didn't stop

with this because she also designed these pillows,

the plus one pillow.

Now this is, can I tell this story?

Let me tell this story. You can tell

this story, baby. So I work with Link,

you know, I make Good Mythical Morning

with Link and everything else that we do at Mythical

and Link's wife, Christie helps Jessie designed

these pillows, they're called the Plus One Pillow,

'cause a lot of times Jessie

and Christie are our plus ones

to different things that we do.

One of the things I love about Jessie's approach

to design is it's not just design,

but it has become inventing as well

and making this sofa, making these pillows.

And she's been able to express herself creatively in ways

that I know are very fulfilling to her.

I love this artist.

This is Michael Doyle, you'll see him throughout the house.

Part of the reason I used his work all over is

because it's so colorful, it's so playful.

He incorporates lots of people, which it's so much

of my design process is centered around people.

If I were to ask you to close your eyes

and imagine a couch with pillows on it,

how many pillows would you imagine were on that couch?

Yes. Not this many.

But if it was a sofa

that you found at an antique store

that came over from Denmark in the seventies,

then I would think it wouldn't matter,

you could not have too many pillows.

Pillows were really big in Denmark in the seventies.

Well, actually they were pretty small,

but they were also very big.

This came like this.

In fact, there were a few more pillows that didn't make it

because the zippers were coming off and I thought-

Can you believe- You know what?

That there were originally- It's enough pillows.

More pillows?

What were they thinking about in Denmark?

[upbeat music]

This is a found vintage French plant stand,

and when I saw it, it immediately made me feel something,

I wasn't sure what, but it was like a punch in the gut.

And so what I found out about this is

they would take pieces, broken pieces of pottery plates

that they loved, little trinkets,

and plaster them to this stand.

And so it kind of becomes this item

that is collecting your memories throughout the years.

Rhett gave me these plates for our 10th anniversary?

And then on our 11th anniversary, she got angry with me.

No, one of them broke- They got broken.

On the way to the cabin.

Yes. So I thought

that this was the perfect opportunity

to make this piece our own.

[upbeat music]

This is the guest room.

We love the idea

of our guests having a nicer bed than the bed that we have.

So that's why this canopy bed is up here in the guest room.

We have to tell our guests that before they stay with us,

because you literally can hear everything.

Like, if somebody said something weird at dinner

and you're like, Can you believe she said that?

You have to talk like, Can you believe she said

that at dinner. You do.

Even if you're up here with the door closed-

You can hear everything in this house.

You might hear 'em through the cracks in the log.

But just in case they do hear us talking crap about them,

they know they have the nicer bed

and they're gonna walk away happy.

This is the en suite guest bathroom.

Yeah, and I struggle

because I might like this bathroom better than our bathroom.

We also gave our guest the better bathroom,

I'll say that. But I did get

the tub in our room.

So this bathroom was so much fun to design

and the people at Rock and Interiors did

an incredible job cutting, fabricating this,

like, this is not easy to do

and not every fabricator can make these cuts,

but we wanted it to be just this

over-the-top oversized vanity

and I think we accomplished that.

You did that, you accomplished that.

Now, one interesting feature that I have

to talk about in this bathroom.

So we've got a glass shower over here,

and Jessie wanted it to be symmetrical.

So now we have a glassed in toilet.

And I will just say just a little etiquette is

that it's okay if somebody sees you use,

in fact, if you could be over there,

over the over the wall there, the pony wall.

I'm in the shower. Yes, I will use the bathroom

while Jessie's in the shower.

I'm gonna be honest with you, we do it.

Are you in the bathroom?

Are you in the water closet?

But I will say I don't make eye contact.

Are you in the water closet?

I look at her body, but I don't make eye contact, okay?

[upbeat music]

This is the movie room.

These couches, this one in the back is actually

on a platform.

So we kind of have a little bit

of a stadium seating situation,

but also it continues to be like very, very cozy

with these big long couches.

Yeah, and we actually plan

on watching a movie in here tonight.

I will say though, it's not simple

because when you were staying here without me, you called me

and I had to walk you through the four step process-

You did. Because you gotta get

the screen down, you gotta turn the projector on,

then you gotta turn the sound on

and then you gotta turn the the video source on.

And that was like a 30 minute phone call

to watch a 30 minute show. It was,

but you like 30 minute phone calls

with your loving wife. I do love talking to you,

I have for an hour.

Exactly. Yeah.

Next time I'll make sure it takes that long.

A lot of the pieces in this room came from a dear friend.

She's become a dear friend through this process,

an antiques dealer who is down the road,

and I will say Julie,

Julie at Little Bojo Valley.

I'll say, Julie, I want chairs that act as kind of a foil

to this more traditional table I have.

And she said, Let me see what I got.

And she brought me these incredible mid-century cafe chairs

that have, are like two toned green

and gold, perfect for this room,

so it felt like it was meant to be.

Over the holidays, I got very sick

and I spent a few days lying on this couch

and I was so helpless and I said,

Jessie, I gotta find a way to get your attention

so you'll come and bring me soup.

And the next thing I know,

she brought in this big ass bell.

[bell dings]

Soup!

She brings me soup.

I'm glad you're better.

[upbeat music]

We have big plans eventually for the outside,

but since we've only had the cabin a few years

and we've been focusing on the inside,

we have some kind of an intermediary thing to hold us over.

We have dubbed this the fairy circle.

This is a place where our family gathers

and also our family comes here probably more than we do,

they end up using this place more than we actually do.

And I have a dream of kind of building a trail

that goes all the way through these woods

and there's a creek way back there and goes along the creek

and then comes back up here.

There's so many really cool artists around here

that make cool sculptures

and outdoor sculptures and that kind of thing.

I would love to have

those kind of along the path at some point

so people kind of enjoy a stroll around the property.

And I'm down with all of those ideas.

[upbeat music]

Thanks so much for coming to the cabin, AD.

We had so much fun. Now you gotta go.

Watch out for the deer. Bye.

The deer, there's one crazy one.

[bright music]