Not every beach house has to shine. Some of them hum — with peeling paint, creaky floorboards, and porches that lean just a little toward the dunes. These are the homes we remember. The ones with salt in the air and sand in the floorboards. The ones that weren’t built to impress, but to shelter joy.
Rustic beach cabins, once common along the coasts of Florida and the Southeast, are becoming harder to find. These places weren’t second homes, they were first loves. Built low to the sand, made from wood that turned silver with time, they carried the rhythms of tide and season in their bones. But in recent years, many of them have been torn down and replaced with large modern homes, towering, perfect, and often empty most of the year.
It’s easy to understand the appeal of something new. Clean lines, modern amenities, more space. But with all that shine, something gets lost. That sense of softness, of being grounded in the environment rather than fighting against it. The older cottages with their sun-faded shutters, mismatched furniture, and breeze-cooled rooms, let the outdoors in. They didn’t resist the elements. They lived with them.
And there’s something to be said for a house that shows its age. A home that remembers your summers, your family meals, your morning walks barefoot to the beach. In these cabins, the imperfections are the point. Rusted hinges. Salt-blown screens. A little wobble in the floor that always creaked when you snuck outside at dawn. Those marks are stories, and they’re fading fast.
At Over Home Cabins, we believe those weathered homes have a kind of elegance that can’t be replicated. They remind us that luxury doesn’t always mean large — and that comfort sometimes comes best in things that are worn, warm, and quietly familiar.
We’ll keep seeking them out, documenting them where we can, and holding space for the feeling they give, the one you get when you wake up to gulls and sea air, in a cabin that feels like it’s always been waiting for you.
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