This Western North Carolina Mountain Retreat Is Straight Out of a Storybook

In the mornings, Perry Vaile likes to go out and sit by the little stream that winds near her house in Western North Carolina and watch the early light soak the mountains, taking a moment to herself before her kids wake up and the day starts. “I still can’t believe it,” she says of her mountain retreat and its spread of surrounding land, which her family dubbed Whimsy Valley.

It was a long journey to purchasing and building the home. She and her husband, who live in Raleigh, had wanted a mountain home for years, and when they found a beautiful waterfront property in Chimney Rock in 2021, she thought they’d hit the jackpot. Even though they were already under contract, just to be safe, she consulted a landslide specialist to make sure building a home there would be safe. “It saved our lives,” she says of that added step. “She called me and told me that at some point in the future, maybe soon, maybe in five hundred years, something would happen to this property.” Vaile pulled out of the contract, and sure enough, it was completely destroyed during Hurricane Helene. “Now I tell everyone I know to do this type of consultation.”

Eventually another gem presented itself, this one in a rolling patch of mountains near Burnsville. “I saw the sunset on the mountains, and we made an offer the next day,” Vaile says. They spent the next two years working with Chris Jarrett, a longtime local contractor (and now family friend), on a new build that would blend seamlessly into the landscape, drawing on Vaile’s background as a historic preservationist. Then came the interiors, where Vaile leaned into her photography career—which has given her an eye for a set—to pull together the perfect mix of antique pieces, patterns, and colors to create timelessness and whimsy in the likes of a vaulted ceiling living room, a “eccentric grandma” kitchen, and a cozy library for sipping hot cocoa in winter. 

Below, peek into the home. 

In the late 1800s, architect Henry Bacon popularized the use of bark siding in Linville, North Carolina, in both homes and the Eseeola Lodge, which still welcomes guests today. Vaile wanted to nod to that history by adding her own bark siding to the house, which is about forty-five minutes from Linville. “It gives the build some vernacular sensitivity that was so important to the historian in me.” 

For the kitchen, Vaile wanted warmth and character. “I was channeling my inner cool grandma,” she says. Her favorite bit is the backsplash, a pattern from late British textile designer William Morris, which plays off the soft blue cupboards. “Anywhere I could add texture or personality, I did.” 

Vaile always wanted to live near a river or stream, so she created her own on the property to wind around the yard, mimicking the shape and rock formations of a natural stream. ”Something is just so magical about the sound of water,” she says—and the stone provides a ready place to sit and enjoy the views, too.  

These antique doors, which actually open to the laundry room, come from an architectural salvage center called the Bank in New Orleans. Vaile centered the master bedroom beyond around the blue patterned wallpaper, which she fell in love with when she saw it at an inn in Highlands while photographing a wedding. 

Vaile packed the living room with details—her favorites include the vintage metal bed warmer leaning against the fireplace (a gift from her contractor’s wife), the metal leaves that wind up the walls, and the two wheeled ottomans.

Vaile’s two daughters, aged seven and ten, perch on the ladder to the loft. “We wanted the living room to have high ceilings to make it feel bigger,” she says—and that allowed for some bonus vertical space, for which she sourced a stained glass window from a decommissioned church. “It’s a south-facing window, so when the light streams in, it’s magical.” 

For her daughters’ bedroom, Vaile wanted something “fun and full of patterns for the girls, but in a way that was chic enough for guests to stay in, too, with an English bed and breakfast feel.” Enter gingham curtains draped from the ceilings, wallpaper from House of Hackney, and a wood checkering that Vaile and her husband did themselves.   

The copper tub in the master bathroom is the showstopper, but the antique dresser, to which Vaile added a marble countertop and stone sink, is a close second—and best of all, she bought it off Facebook Marketplace. “I’m all about that mix of high and low, and I love antiquing and a good find.” 

The house’s back deck is outfitted with rocking chairs for soaking up the morning and evening scenery. “We wanted the porch to be a wraparound so that you could feel the view was more than just one direction,” Vaile says. “Everything, even the hard days, are better with the views.”   

Six miniature ponies roam the property, too. They arrived along with Vaile’s mother, who now lives in a cabin down the hill. “The other day I sent my daughter down the hill to her grandma’s to get stamps and eggs, and it felt like we had gone back in time by a century.”