LAKE GASTON — For Lake Gaston builder Sid Cutts, doing what he loves most is garnering him a lot of attention. It’s one thing that his work was featured in N.C. Boating Lifestyles Magazine, but now he’s been recognized by Southern Living Magazine as well.

(Use arrows above to view more photos) Advertisement

Recently, Cutts, owner of Corbett Hills Construction, was approached by the magazine to apply as a member of their Custom Builder Program. The magazine chooses only 100 builders across the nation to receive this distinction, and for Cutts it was a great surprise and honor. Members are chosen based on their reputation among local businesses and consumers; strength of presence in their respective markets; superior quality and attention to detail; innovative style; and other criteria.

Vicky Serany, a decorator from Apex, N.C. and member of the Southern Living Council became familiar with Cutts through her work. She was impressed with what she saw, and recommended him to the board. Later, they asked him to apply. “It was a huge complement to be chosen,” he said. “It’s great when someone recognizes that you do something different.” Cutts stopped for a moment and looked out over the waters of Lake Gaston. The wind was driving the white caps, and Cutts commented about how amazing it was that the bridge acted as such a strong breaker for the waves. He observed how the waters were so choppy on the west side of the bridge and how tranquil they were on the east. “I love this place,” he said as he turned to go inside.

Cutts, a native of Oxford, grew up in the presence of stately Southern mansions. He loved to visit with his grandparents, particularly his grandfather, who shared stories about times before the Roanoke River was dammed to form Lake Gaston. Cutts said that he remembers how his grandfather shared the stories of the ferry, and how the trucking companies would have to cross the river at Eaton’s Ferry to get up north. “They would put one truck on the ferry. It was loaded with cotton when it was going north and lumber when it came back.”

Cutts didn’t just spend time with his grandparents. He also took art classes. Those classes were spent walking around Oxford sketching “those beautiful old homes.” Cutts said he thought it was ironic that later in life he would not only be drawn to Lake Gaston, but that he’d end up building homes on the very site where many of his grandfather’s stories were set— the same styles of homes that he drew when he was in third and fourth grade. “Who would ever believe that I would be building these beautiful homes on the most beautiful piece of property on the lake?” That “beautiful piece of property,” Cutts was referring to what is now known as Eaton’s Crossing, a new subdivision that features antebellum style homes on the waterfront, indeed the same style of home that lined the Roanoke’s riverbanks hundreds of years ago. The concept is Cutts brain child.

Cutts said he loves the simple beauty of antebellum architecture, and that it was all that Southern history that influenced his work. “When I was designing the piers for Eaton’s Crossing, I didn’t want them to look like piers. Like, I wanted the poles to look like the columns on those old houses. I was halfway thinking art and halfway thinking architecture,’ he said.

When his grandfather died in 2004, at the age of 92, Cutts renamed his business in his honor. “My grandfather had a shopping mall in Henderson named Corbitt Hills,” he said. So he renamed the construction company Corbitt Hills Construction LLC. He said it means something to him, reminds him of his grandfather and his stories. It reminds him of his passion to create a vision of tranquility. It reminds him of the history that is steeped in the trees, the rocks and the water, and it makes him happy. “If you can make money doing something that makes you happy, you’ve got the Holy Grail,” he said.

It’s that passion, that love and probably that happiness that’s bringing all this attention to his work. This latest recognition from Southern Living Magazine means that when clients are looking for someone with that special flare for history to build their homes, Cutts is the one they call. “I LOVE Southern Living and their designs. Of all the homes I’ve built at Lake Gaston in the past five or six years, about 90 percent of them are Southern Living house plans that I picked or showed to my clients,” he said.