Original subtitles

[theme music]

[wood chopping]

JANET SMITH: I think of Maine culture as really outdoorsy.

Regardless of the season, there's

still a lot to do outside.

The state motto is "The way life should be."

I think, it just so accurately describes

every time I'm up here.

I always feel, like, this really is the way life should be.

SEAN SMITH: This is Janice's favorite place in the world.

[side conversations]

JANET SMITH: We live full time in North Carolina.

Our life there is--

Adventurous.

We have this cabin in Maine, and we come

here at least once a month.

We started the search the summer of 2020.

I came for the first time and just walked around and loved

how protected it was, how I was so close to my family in town

and still felt like we had kind of our own world.

I brought my hammock over, and I hung

the hammock up right near the rock, and that just, like,

confirmed it.

100%, this is where we need to build.

I think, the design started truly,

back when I was in elementary school.

When I was bored in class, I would take graph paper

and just do, like, architectural designs.

The thing about mine was that it was always very small spaces,

and it was always very centered on cozy.

SEAN SMITH: As an observer, watching the design

and build process, I know that Janice wanted

a rustic, bare bones design.

JANET SMITH: I found Pete Long, who

is a designer of the original Ravenhouse Cabin,

and it's just, like, the original is an off-grid, very

rustic, very small space.

Our interior designer worked with us

on taking Pete's designs, which are luckily

more on the rustic side, and then integrating a more modern,

simplistic design on the inside so that it wasn't too busy

and was really thoughtfully put together.

We were pretty intentional on putting the cabin

back on the land a little bit.

It's kind of tucked away behind some trees.

The shape is really rectangular, and I love that Pete decided

to really make that peak a centerpiece of the design

by putting six small windows in it

above this really large picture window.

I think, it's those windows up top that give it that feel

of having a personality.

SEAN SMITH: The first thing to hit

you when you walk through the door is the smell of the wood.

It never gets old, and I hope it never goes away.

JANET SMITH: In a lot of well-designed spaces,

you see really white kitchens.

White is beautiful.

I just don't feel, like, it's always as inviting,

and to me, the designer came up with the color,

but the second I saw it, I was like, absolutely.

And I feel, like, it feels a bit more.

Like, it blends into all the trees

that you're seeing through the windows.

And I think the star of the living room, there's two.

The first one is, obviously, the wood stove,

and when we're sitting in the living room,

it's most often because you get so much warmth and heat

from the stove right here, but the second one

is the rocking chair.

And this was actually the first thing

that we sourced for the cabin, and everything else

was designed around it.

SEAN SMITH: Yeah, we fight over who gets to sit in that rocker.

I will spend days with my feet up, reading

a book in that rocking chair-- JANET SMITH: That's good.

SEAN SMITH: --just feeding the fire.

The barn door is one of my favorite pieces of the cabin.

It's a massive pecan slab that we had custom made,

and it's a very imposing feature, but it's gorgeous.

And it's standing against this dark, blue wall,

and its color just, pops right out at you.

JANET SMITH: When you leave the main space

and you go through the pecan slab door,

you enter the bedroom.

On the right, you have this giant picture window,

I call it, because literally, no matter

the season, when you're looking out that window,

it looks like a framed piece of artwork.

And then, to the left, there's a large bed.

And another one of my favorite windows right above that bed

is this long horizontal window that

looks right out at the rock.

And so when the sun hits it at a certain time of day,

it's almost this illusion, where I feel like I'm

in the mountains somewhere, and I'm

just looking at this rock face.

SEAN SMITH: As soon as you walk in,

you are confronted with this staircase

that wraps around to the left.

And part of Pete's design was to have, what he called,

the cliff and the cave.

When you step in, you really see the light, airy loft

and then the bedroom downstairs is nice and dark and sedated.

It's this wonderful juxtaposition

between light and dark.

JANET SMITH: In the loft, there's this triangle wall

that, as soon as I saw it, I thought,

that is the perfect spot for a bookshelf.

And so, we had planned that very early on in the

build because when I go to a cabin, I want to disconnect,

and books are a really good way to pull you away from devices

and let you just kind of escape.

SEAN SMITH: Outside the cabin the biggest,

best feature is the rock that the house is named for--

Cozy Rock-- and it is this 16-foot high ledge that

goes straight up, covered in moss,

and then it spills down to where we put the fire

pit out back for gathering.

JANET SMITH: When we first named the cabin

and we named it Cozy Rock, one of my friends

said to me, like, I don't think that's a good name

because rocks aren't very cozy.

And I was, like, well, we're going

to make this the coziest rock you've ever seen.

The hot tub in the winter, when you're sitting there,

it's oriented so that the two seats are facing the rock,

and that is the best place in the world, when

a rock is covered with snow.

SEAN SMITH: Yeah, it's nice at night.

Turn on the cafe lights, and you're

just out there with the mist and your thoughts.

JANET SMITH: What I love about Mainers and Maine

culture is that it does get really cold in the winter

and that doesn't stop anyone.

SEAN SMITH: Our relationship, very much,

evolved with the cabin.

JANET SMITH: We weren't even engaged

when we started building the cabin,

and we only got engaged right before we finished it.

We had no idea, when we were making all these choices,

that it would then one day be basically, our wedding venue.

It was outside on top of the rock.

We used the big trees that we cut

down from clearing the land.

We turned those into stumps that everyone sat on.

SEAN SMITH: It was a very fitting place

to get married because this was literally, the foundation

of our relationship.

JANET SMITH: It was all just here in the woods

on top of the rock.