Hall Pass

by Anton Zuiker on November 30, 2025

Our house on an autumn afternoon (through the iPhone comic book filter).

With the September/October 2025 issue, Dwell Magazine celebrated its 25th year. As a charter subscriber, I’ve been reading that magazine from the beginning, and its stories and photos sparked my desire for a writing cabin and a modern house.

To pay homage to the magazine, I gave myself an assignment: In the style of Dwell, write a short article about my writing space in this fabulous new house. Enjoy.

In a North Carolina college town, the Zuiker family builds a home for chronicling the joys of family, friends, and a far-off island community

When Anton Zuiker sits down to write at his desk inside the modern, barn-like house in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Paama Island feels just an arm’s length away even though it is on the other side of the planet, in the middle of an archipelago that is the Republic of Vanuatu.

Above Anton’s desk hangs a painting of Paama, hilly and covered in green and surrounded by the blue of the Pacific Ocean, a golden sunset and volcanic Ambrym Island to the north. Paama is where Anton and his wife, Erin Shaughnessy Zuiker, spent two years as Peace Corps Volunteers in the late 1990s. The painting was a gift of a fellow volunteer, Chad Metzler.

“Chad’s painting is a constant reminder of the life-changing experience I had as a Peace Corps Volunteer on Paama,” says Anton. “And when I look at the tamtam drum that’s on my desk, I remember the warm people of Paama who were so welcoming to me and Erin.”

Anton’s desk is alongside built-in bookshelves in a first-floor hallway between the primary bedroom and a spacious office, in which Erin runs her boutique law firm. Both the desk and the office, like other rooms in the house, have tall windows that look out into a forest of towering oak, hickory, sourwood, and pine trees. In that forest, Anton and Erin and their three children often see white-tailed deer, gray fox, and Eastern box turtles, or they hear pileated woodpeckers, great-horned owls, and other migratory birds.

“We came to Chapel Hill for graduate school at the University of North Carolina, and we’ve stayed in the area for 20 years,” says Erin, who still thinks of Cleveland’s West Park neighborhood, where she grew up and often visits, as home away from home. As their family expanded and their careers progressed—Anton is a research communicator at Duke University—they lived in houses in Durham and Carrboro, but all that time they were looking for an older house to renovate.

Eventually they found a solid brick ranch built in 1961 on a four-acre lot on the edge of Chapel Hill. After a comprehensive renovation, they moved in during the summer of 2018; a month later, they were on an airplane with their children on a trip to Australia and to meet the villagers on Paama.

When they returned, Erin and Anton oversaw a project to remove a dozen oak and pine trees, including a blackjack oak, and then mill them on site. Once stacked and covered, the oak slabs sat undisturbed for four years. By then, the couple had purchased the adjacent, undeveloped four-and-a-half-acre lot and were planning a modern new house that might feature some of that wood.

For this project, they turned to another Vanuatu friend, Denver architect Kevin Anderson.

“I told Kevin that I wanted a breezeway where I could sit and watch the rain, and Erin wanted a heated bathtub where she could retreat to soak,” says Anton. “And we both wanted a unique but inviting structure in which we could gather with family and friends while always seeing the forest outside.”

Kevin, serving as the consultation/design architect, transformed the ideas of Erin and Anton into plans for a frame house, with the main two-story form clad in board and batten and looking like a modern barn. A vaulted side form includes Erin’s office and the primary suite with its own small sitting porch. On the north end, another side form, clad in warm cypress boards, provides a guest bedroom, laundry room and space for dropping coats and shoes. Two bedrooms and a media space are up a wraparound staircase. In an ode to the Shaughnessy family home in Cleveland, the new house features five pocket doors throughout the first floor.

Local builder Layton Wheeler, who had just finished constructing a house for Erin’s sister, Mary, down the gravel road, managed the Zuikers’ project. His carpenter used those milled slabs of white oak for Anton’s desk and a counter in the narrow walk-in pantry. The cabinet maker and his son, meanwhile, crafted the blackjack slabs into a beautiful long table for the dining room.

The family moved into the new house in May 2023, and a cousin of Erin and Mary bought the brick ranch and moved in with her children.

Two and a half years later, Erin looks up from editing a contract to enjoy the Carolina blue sky and the autumn rain of colorful leaves. Later, after a family meal, Anton will be at his hallway desk, crafting a blog post for the Zuiker Chronicles Online, which he started in 2000, the same year that Dwell published its first issue.

“Wherever I am in this house, I’m filled with gratitude,” he says. “I’m happy because there’s nature to look at, friends to remember, and designed spaces to enjoy.”

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