The Hunt for a Cottage begins...

We arrived on Tybee in November and stayed at the Mermaid Cottages rental Fiddler on the Creek on South Campbell. The Cottage was located on the marsh and was adorable! We raced around looking at all the special touches...my favorite the thrash can in the bathroom was a old white enamel chamber pot! The cottage had a small screened porch and two outdoor spaces directly on the marsh. We were able to sit on the dock and watch huge blue herons and great egrets! We settled in and called Sandy to see when we would hook up with her to start the hunt. We needed to grab some lunch first and Sandy had mentioned that the North Beach Grill was close and near the Lighthouse...another favorite thing of ours! She also said they had Carmel Cake to die for...so we made sure we ordered a piece to take to her. When we met we started off my giving her the cake which earned us a hug from the get go! We clicked with Sandy right off and she totally got what we were looking for and knew the budget was the driver. One perfect property had sold for a "steal " just the month before so the window on low prices was starting to close. We looked at a house on Lewis Ave. and the lot had a nice marsh view but the house was full of mold, nasty, with water damage in some areas. We walked the property and walked back through as I was figuring renovation costs in my head and how much work it would take and I quickly realized that while I had high hopes for this property from the pictures that Sandy had sent...I couldn't see how we could get involved in a project this large and even if we bought in for $100,000 they were asking $140,000 I was concerned that it could easily cost another $100,000 or more to put it right. The only thing it had going for it was the marsh view...and we would not be able to stay in the house while we were working on it so that really was the deal breaker. Sandy had sent us a couple more pictures we roared off in her mini van to check them out. We looked at another house on Lewis that was on the other side of the street and it had a much better marsh view. It was clean inside but that was about the only other good thing I could say...it was a hodge podge of add ons and had a strange floor plan and lots of steep stairs. I have some issues from spinal cord surgery in 2006 and stairs are getting to be another deal breaker. So our top two possibilities were really not working out. We agreed to meet the next day and try again.  Stay tuned more tommorow.