A quaint seaside retreat, just a quick 200 miles from the beach

Every year about this time, I get beach fever. As soon as it becomes apparent that the gloom of winter is fading away and balmier temperatures set in, I yearn to return to Wrightsville. Frustratingly, this time of year the weather is very unpredictable—one weekend it's 70 degrees and sunny, and the next it can be 55 degrees and rainy—so I must be content to live in a fantasy world for a little while. I begin to don my "Wrightsville Wear," consisting of lightweight polo shirts, light-colored chinos, my Sperry boat shoes, tasteful Polynesian shirts, and my hoodie for a layer of warmth, which I wear around our air-conditioned beach condo. It's the sort of "preppie casual" that one would have spotted on practically every respectable gentleman who strolled Lumina Avenue in the 1990s. Well, actually, most of them would have been wearing shorts. I just have an aversion to shorts rooted in my disdain for the humiliating plaid short-pants suit I was forced to wear to church when I was a toddler. Even at that young age I knew I looked like a tool.

This year, I'm afraid my delusions are creeping into home decor. While enjoying lunch on a near-perfect Sunday afternoon, my wife and I got to brainstorming ways to improve our patio. Currently it isn't much to look at—dull gray furniture, old moldy folding chaises, and a nasty old black garden hose balled up in the corner that was there when she bought the place, all on a bland concrete floor. Maybe it was the beer, but we felt compelled to go to Lowes and Target right then and there and seek out accouterments to spruce up the patio. We purchased some cheerful teal and white cushions, a pair of faux palm trees, and a new green garden hose, neatly coiled on a decorative rack. Future plans call for painting the wood fence and the patio furniture white, and getting new chaises which we'll take better care of. I'd also like to get a couple of distressed signs appropriate for the seaside atmosphere, such as "to the beach" (arrow pointing to the gate) and perhaps an advert for a seafood restaurant. The door to the adjacent storage shed will be painted to match the teal cushions, providing a little punch of color.

The interior of the house has not been spared either. A faux palm tree adds a tropical flair to the dining room, along with another in the foyer. I even plan to install plank paneling in the front hall for a beach house look, and if I get my way, paint the walls a calm blue. Now that most of the clutter has been cleared, our overall goal is to create a restful, relaxing refuge from the hurly-burly of the outside world, a place where we can kick back and almost hear the waves crashing outside. Speaking of which, I'll probably set up speakers outside to play ocean sound effects.