Couple who ‘never sit still’ designed and built this Mississippi Coast log cabin retreat
There’s something magical about Breezy Porches, a two-story cabin close to the beach in Waveland.
Glenn Hood and Charles “Chuck” Underwood, the couple who own the property, have created a unique retreat that sits just off Nicholson Avenue.
The main house was completely restored and then, after Hurricane Katrina, rebuilt. They also added a garage with a one-bedroom apartment downstairs and a second apartment upstairs. The house and apartments are available as short-term rentals.
Their creativity — and hard work — is on display throughout the property. An arched arbor loaded with star jasmine graces a side entrance that opens onto a landscaped courtyard with above-ground swimming pool, fountain and seating areas.
After enjoying and improving on the property, Hood and Underwood are ready to downsize. But they have no desire to leave Waveland. They’ve moved just across the street into a two-story building with Underwood’s Waveland Candle Co. downstairs and a two-bedroom apartment upstairs.
Breezy Porches, so named because of the wraparound porch on the main house, is on the market for $449,000.
“This place has brought us so much joy,” said Hood, who owns Louisiana Log Home Co. in Slidell.
Finding a home on the MS Coast
A year after they met in 2002, Underwood and Hood decided to find a home for themselves. They wanted to live on the Mississippi Coast near the beach. They looked all over for the right property, but realized the Bay St. Louis-Waveland area was where they wanted to settle.
Someone else beat them to the property that would become Breezy Porches, but the couple was ready with an offer when the original sales contract fell through. They wasted no time putting their mark on the 1940s bungalow on the property, transforming it over their first weekend as owners, stripping out old carpet and wallpaper, refinishing the wood floors and painting the white exterior siding.
By Sunday morning, it looked like a different house. They settled in during the summer of 2005, making friends in their new community, inviting guests for beach weekends and continuing to work on the property.
Months after the couple moved in, in August 2005, Hurricane Katrina heavily damaged the house, felled dozens of trees on the lot and flattened the garage. The couple parked a camper in the yard and got to work. Outside, they dug a pond, added brick pavers and planted flowers “just to change our view,” Hood said.
They kept the original footprint of the main house but added a second story. They built a garage, later adding a one-bedroom apartment downstairs and a second-story loft apartment upstairs .
“Everything was constantly evolving,” Hood said. “We don’t sit still very long.”
Hood and Underwood have done almost all the work themselves.
Home makeover peppered with character
The couple wanted to keep the historic feel of their original 1940s bungalow with its sturdy cypress floor joists. They wrapped the house in log siding, which Hood is partial to after growing up in the log home business.
They decided to finish the interior walls and ceilings with bead board rather than Sheetrock.
“We didn’t want it to look like a new house,” Hood said. “We wanted it to look like it had been here forever.”
They also added features such as hurricane ties and galvanized aluminum roofing that strengthened the house for storms. They worked for a year solid to rebuild the house, moving back in in November 2006.
No two doors in the house are alike. The couple acquired them here and there, one having been cast onto the roadside in New Orleans after Katrina. Some of the interior doors have overhead transoms.
The house and guest apartments are peppered with character, including blinds used as siding on each end of the kitchen island. A pelican serves as a finial on the wooden staircase in the living room. Bamboo is repurposed as curtain rods.
The outdoor landscaping features Japanese maples, azaleas, ferns, verbena, roses, irises, agapanthus and jasmine.
The porch that gives the property its name is screened on three sides and open in front.
Hood and Underwood have a good view of the property from their new home across the street, where Underwood has planted a garden.
“This is a new chapter for us,” Hood said. “We’re open for what life is going to send our way.”
