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Seven years ago my wife and I celebrated our first anniversary by driving the entire panhandle of Florida. Every beach we came to we stopped, got real-estate brochures and dreamed about buying a beach house.

Having our feet planted in sand is a nurturing ritual that keeps us going back to the beach. On our anniversary trip we discovered beautiful houses that were too expensive and then found not so beautiful houses that were too expensive, and finally found a beautiful, ramshackle 1920’s beach house which was again, too expensive, but we loved it and devised a plan.

The house, in Beacon Hill, a small beach community east of Panama City was still owned by the family that built it eighty years ago. As a boy, the owner had actually worked on the house — and that was about the last time the house was worked on. They offered to demolish it if we bought the lot, but it was the house we had fallen in love with as much as the land. It was, after all, our first anniversary, and we had a romantic vision of preserving a piece of old Florida, albeit with new Florida amenities!

The house sits on a bluff overlooking the gulf and when it was built there were no roads. The family would arrive by boat, bringing all the supplies they would need for the summer, including a cow.

Inside the house had five bedrooms and one, tiny bathroom which seemed to be lit from below. Investigating we discovered the shower drain was merely a hole in the floor, allowing for a nice sand-lit glow to emanate from beneath. The kitchen also had a nice glow, the slat siding on the outside was just the other side of the slat siding on the inside and you could see right through the wall to the backyard.

There was work to do, not least of which was figuring out how to buy it. We needed partners. Our first call was to my wife’s father Mike, who against his normally rational behavior agreed to be a partner without ever seeing the house. We needed another partner to make it work so we called our friends J.D. Scott and Pam Wuichet.

They know me too well to fall for one of my schemes, but when Laurie piped in they were sold and we made an offer. The offer was accepted before they had actually seen the house and perhaps we had been a little generous in describing the place. When Mike finally saw the house he said the only positive thing the real-estate agent could say was “Isn’t that a beautiful tree?” J.D. had a more spiritual reaction. His first thought was: “Oh, God!”

We started the process of renovating. I am not one to look kindly on a tool box so this was an educational experience for me. The work list is much too long to go into, but it did include removing an abandoned road that went across the property and hammering, nailing, painting, tearing down and building back almost every wall in the house. We sanded the gray worn floors and discovered the beautiful red shading of hundred year-old heart pine. A year later we had a beautiful beach house and the sweat only made it sweeter.

Now, with four bedrooms and three and a half baths the house is a relaxing retreat where we all gather to get away from work and responsibilities. We decided to make it a home we would love, furnishing it with comfort in mind and filling it with art we had collected from around the world. We were rewarded for our efforts when Coastal Living featured our house in their magazine and called it “a true gem.”

This week will be our eighth wedding anniversary and the seventh year we’ve owned Beacon Bluff. The house, once worn and falling down has become a warm, inviting retreat. Like our marriage, we put a lot into it and discovered a true gem.

Our greatest pleasure is reading the comments left in our guest book by the people who have stayed. Here are just a few, but they reflect the rest:

“It was my first time here, but not my last. It was exciting to find a corner of Florida that is not overgrown into a city of cement sand castles.”

“All in all, we give Beacon Bluff an “11” on a scale of 1 to 10!”

And one of our favorites:

“We came, we saw, we loved it. See ya next year!”

For information on how you can stay at Beacon Bluff, contact Pristine Properties at 1.800.215.0677 or click on the link:

Beacon Bluff.

Photographs: Beacon Bluff at night, by J.D. Scott; the original and remodeled kitchen; the house when we bought it and the view from our front yard.

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4 Responses to “The Best Little Beach House in Florida”

1. bobj says:

   May 18, 2009 at 10:42 am

   “Having our feet planted in sand is a nurturing ritual…” You got it exactly right, Billy Howard. This time next week, we’ll wriggling the sand up to our ankles and beyond on St. George Island. For many of us land-locked Atlantans, it’s dang near hallowed ground.

   Reply
2. Adam says:

   May 18, 2009 at 12:01 pm

   Please tell me the former owners have expressed some gratitude for what you did to save the home. Hurricane Hugo and the real estate bubble has changed my family’s summer retreat, Pawleys Island, SC, from being known as “arrogantly shabby” to just plain arrogant. We have a bumper sticker in Charleston in support of The Preservation Society that says “Gut fish, not houses.” I wish you had bought an old cottage at Pawleys.

   Reply
3. Billy Howard says:

   May 19, 2009 at 10:19 pm

   The owners, who were in their nineties when we bought the house, and quite able to negotiate for themselves, haven’t returned but one of their grandchildren did and loved what we had done and that meant the world to us.

   Reply
4. jingle davis says:

   May 20, 2009 at 9:27 am

   great story, billy. and i too applaud you and your wife and partners for saving such a wonderful treasure from florida’s past, too little of which survives. the house sounds wonderful. i’ve remodeled beach houses myself over the years and like to think the tiny cottage my husband and i now occupy in athens, georgia, has a beachh house spirit. i’d love to see your florida place and you’re welcome to drop by and see us in athens any time. by the way, we have mutual friends: melissa and jerome walker. my relationship with melissa goes back to when our grandmothers were pregnant with our mothers, who were friends in dublin, ga. our mothers were pregnant with melissa and me at the same time. we call each other “my friend of longest standing.” jingle

   Reply

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