See the evolution of Laurel Hill, which sits nestled on 75 acres overlooking Bulls Bay
The turn off Highway 17 just before McClellanville gives nothing away. Pass through a gate and follow a winding drive hemmed in by trees and a tidal creek, past a dove field, before the forest opens to an undulating landscape dotted with 50 live oaks. Peeking out from behind one is a two-story house in muted tans and bronze, sitting so subtly against the marsh that it almost disappears, which is exactly what the homeowners wanted.
When architect Brent Fleming offered two exterior palettes—the traditional Lowcountry white with a red tin roof or something more natural—it was an easy choice. “We wanted it to blend into the landscape,” says Becky Smith, who bought the property known as Laurel Hill with her husband, Trey, and spent a year and a half renovating it.
Laurel Hill dates to 1850, when Richard Tillia Morrison II bought the land, expanded the plantation, and built a home. In 1983, Dr. Richard Leland Morrison III and his wife, Jackie, moved that antebellum house across Highway 17 to the marsh site, intending to restore it. Six years later, Hurricane Hugo flattened it.
The Morrisons salvaged what they could—beams, floorboards, doors, a mantel—and rebuilt about 14 feet above flood level. The couple ran a bed-and-breakfast from the home for years, which is where the Smiths enter the story.
Trey, who grew up on 300 acres in Barnwell, South Carolina, came to Charleston for The Citadel and never left. Becky arrived from Northern Virginia for the College of Charleston, and the couple eventually settled in Mount Pleasant, where they raised two daughters. In 1998, the year after they married, Trey’s parents brought the family to Laurel Hill for a weekend. Looking over the marsh toward the Atlantic, Trey realized he had fished these same waters as a child with his father.
Two decades later, with their daughters now at Clemson, the couple was ready for a change. Becky had retired after 25 years in chemical manufacturing, and Trey was traveling frequently for Green Rock, the environmental services company he founded. Mount Pleasant traffic had become problematic, and they wanted breathing room—a home large enough for visiting family, space for a pool, and one nonnegotiable: deep water.
In 2021, after searching for several years from DeBordieu to Beaufort, the couple learned that Laurel Hill was for sale. They wrote to Dr. Morrison’s daughters, reminding them of their stay as newlyweds and promising to live in the house, take care of it, and love it. “I believe that went a long way,” Trey says.
Buying Laurel Hill was one thing; making the former B&B work as a family home was another. It had two faux chimneys in separate sitting areas for breakfast, a warren of small rooms, family quarters at the back, and tiny windows that ignored the view. “The first thing I asked Brackish Builders was, ‘Is this structural or can it go?’” Trey notes, pointing to where one of the chimneys once stood.
Tearing down the home was never a consideration. “Even though it wasn’t historic, we wanted to preserve what was here and add to it,” Becky says. They gutted the downstairs, creating fewer, larger rooms and opening the house to its surroundings. Fleming replaced the small windows with glass doors that frame Bulls Bay, the Intracoastal Waterway, and the Atlantic beyond. “We tried to open up the house to the view as much as possible,” he says.
One strategic decision was to enclose two sides of the wraparound porch to create a dining room and Trey’s office, an idea sparked by Georgia-based designer Maggie Griffin during her first walkthrough. “Maggie said, ‘Where will you go? Where are you going to put your Christmas tree? Where are your grandkids going to go?’” recalls Becky. Moving the dining table to the enclosed porch freed the main room for Becky’s sitting area. “It’s because of Maggie that I have this room that I love,” she says. “Otherwise it was just going to host a ginormous 12-foot table we used twice a year.”
Trey has his own space, a den complete with a pool table and bar area. The two rooms sit on either side of the large kitchen, where he cooks the fish he catches just steps from the house. But the couple’s favorite spot is the keeping room, connecting the kitchen to the porch. “It’s where we spend 90 percent of our time,” says Becky. “Morning coffee, end of the night, everyone ends up right there.”
Throughout the 3,500-square-foot home, the Smiths incorporated elements salvaged from the 1850s house: heart pine floorboards became wainscoting, the mantel went into the new dining room, and original beams grace the sitting room. The rear wing was rebuilt as a primary suite with his-and-hers closets, while upstairs received mostly cosmetic updates to the four en-suite bedrooms, along with a refinished staircase and floors. Below, the ground level became an outdoor living room and kitchen alongside the pool Becky had wanted for years, all fenced against the alligators in the nearby freshwater pond.
For the interiors, Becky turned to Griffin, drawn to her work on homes in Highlands and Cashiers. “I knew I didn’t want coastal; I wanted a family home that’s warm and welcoming,” says Becky. “I recall I used the word farmland.”
Griffin worked with what the Smiths owned—antiques inherited from Trey’s parents and family art leaning toward wildlife and nature—while strategically incorporating new pieces and re-covering old. “Becky and I both gravitate toward a more handsome color palette and pattern layering, versus anything too sweet or cutesy,” Griffin says. The landscape set the palette: “With the beautiful marshes beyond the windows and the roaming wooded grounds, hues of blue, green, and brown were a natural direction from the start.”
In the guest rooms, she leaned further into the warm, woodsy vibe, with moodier colors on the walls and ceilings. Each has its own nature-themed palette, prompting the Smiths’ daughters to christen them the “Fish,” “Marsh,” “Oak,” and “Green” rooms. “I loved the thought of having rooms that guests became enamored with over the years and would request time after time,” says Griffin.
The rooms speak to the home’s core purpose: a gathering place. Trey and Becky may be empty nesters, but they were determined to feather the nest anyway. “When we bought this, Trey’s parents were selling their home,” says Becky. “I think we knew deep down we were losing that big space to gather as a family, and we wanted a place for our kids to come back and visit.”
Three years in, they’ve learned the rhythms of a more rural life. The 20-minute run to the grocery store is offset by hundreds of egrets and herons streaming past the house at dawn and dusk, dolphins feeding along the creek at low tide, and dozens of deer lining the driveway as they return home in the evening. “I can’t think of anything we would change,” says Trey. “We’re super happy.”
