Dreaming of a Southern Home

I have been dreaming about my new home.  This is the year we plan to buy a new home.    We sold our big house in Ohio and moved into a small condominium since we spend more time in Florida than Ohio.  With my husband working in two locations, this is what works the best for us.  What hasn’t been working is that we only have a small condominium in Florida too.  It is time to get some treasured things out of storage and into a proper house!  What is this dream house I have in my mind?

This would be fine, don’t you think? Okay, I am only kidding.  This beautiful Antebellum home is the Oak Alley Plantation in Vacherie, Louisiana.  I do love Antebellum style homes, and there are a few in our community.  None of them are old and historic, but I don’t really want to live in an old home again.  I admire those of you who restore and treasure old homes.  I appreciate that you are a caretaker for a home that will live on after you have left it.  I would love to build a home so it would be exactly what I want, but unfortunately that isn’t feasible in our town, and that is what comes first for both my husband and myself.  We can currently walk ‘downtown’ to a variety of restaurants and shops in about 15 minutes, and we don’t want to give up that lifestyle.  The other great thing is that we are only 30 minutes from an international airport which is especially important to my husband with all the travel he must do for work.

Those few Antebellum style homes in our community are really much larger than our needs.  Being empty-nesters, we learned in our last large house, not to buy too much square footage, because it just becomes something you pay to heat and cool and pay taxes on.  I want enough room to be able to host my family when they come for a visit, though. What we do have in the right size are several homes built in the Charleston Single House style.  In addition to the Antebellum houses, I have fallen in love with the Charleston Single House.  The one above is the Thomas Rose house, built in 1735.

Don’t know what a Single House is?  I didn’t either, until I started doing some research.  The Single House was a house plan designed one room wide with the rooms all opening onto porches, which they called piazzas in Charleston.  This way the house would benefit from cross-ventilation in the time prior to air conditioning.

One of my favorite things about these homes is the front door that opens onto the first floor piazza.  When you go through the front door you are still outside, on the porch.  The piazza is considered the foyer or entryway.  I have read that if you were accepting guests, you would have this door open, and if you were not accepting guests, it would stay closed.

This is an architectural style of home I would love to live in, but we all know that dreams and reality don’t always match up.  I will be doing lots of dreaming about this as we pursue our new home dream and I hope you will come along with me.

I know there are too many things on my dream list to incorporate them all into an actual home, but it will be a great adventure to go on!  For example, do you think I can incorporate a little fountain like this one, and also use it as a pool?  If you don’t already subscribe to Celebrate and Decorate, I hope you will take a moment to sign up so you can see where this adventure takes us!  I would love to hear what you would want in a dream home, and I will be sharing all kinds of inspiring ideas right here!