“Everybody said I was making this too nice,” Robert Williamson told me of the design for Smokesmith. After he and his wife, Laurie, remodeled the building, it is unrecognizable from the former service station that had sat vacant for years. Williamson used distressed wood, decorative concrete blocks, and large sheets of salvaged glass to emphasize the entry. Inside, he built a bar wrapped with tin tiles. Above the bar, a locally fabricated sign hangs from the exposed wood rafters and spells out “MEAT” in individual illuminated letters. It doesn’t look like the dining room of your average barbecue joint.Williamson said he’s a restaurateur first, but has a strong connection to design. “I just relate to that world,” he said, and it runs in the family.…