To clarify some things about our ideas to buy on Isle of Palms - while we're going to hold off on buying, and may not ever buy on the island itself, the area around it seems to be exactly what we're looking for our retirement years. The island is less than 13 miles to downtown Charleston, and only 20 miles to the Charleston Int'l airport. Even closer than Charleston is Mount Pleasant, about 4 miles away (across the Inter-coastal waterway and a marsh), which has plenty of shopping, restaurants, medical care including a decent hospital. In addition to wanting to live close to the ocean, we want to live near good medical care (this is most important), shopping (I'm not going to stop doing DIY projects on any home I live in until my body gives out - it's my hobby), airports, etc. I love the beach - every vacation we can we go to a beach - we've visited many of the east coast beaches over the years - I never get tired of it. My husband loves salt water fishing. We have a boat that he takes onto the Chesapeake Bay all the time to fish, and we go tubing on the Potomac River with our grown kids and grand kids (who are still very little). We've planned on retiring to as close to the (right) beach as possible for at least 20 years and I think it's safe to say that we're not going to change our mind about that between now and when we actually retire. And I definitely don't want to ever live someplace rural again - did that as child and have family still there - definitely not for me. Even if we were young I don't want to live in a place where there aren't plenty of doctors, including all types of specialists, and I don't want to live someplace, where if one of us was in the hospital, the other would have to drive over an hour back and forth. I'm honestly surprised at how many people I know who retire who don't care about that aspect at all. So - given what we know we want/need, we've been considering all the areas close to the Atlantic between Wilmington NC and Jacksonville FL. A few years ago we visited every place that even seemed to come close to what we want. But when we were looking before our income and savings were a fair amount less than they are now, and housing costs and interest rates were higher, so it limited where we would be able to afford to buy, so we didn't consider some of the areas we could afford now. And this is a retirement place we're talking about - being able to vacation in it before retirement is a bonus. We could wait until we retire to buy, but as I said in the original post, I don't want to miss an opportunity to buy while the prices are low AND the interest rates are low. But I do think we need to slow down and take our time - visit and stay there during different seasons, including the heavy tourist season, and make sure that it's what we want. We may find that living on an island/beach itself is not that great and that we should go back to what we always considered to be our only option - living on the mainland, but close to the beach. People seem to think that prices will be low for a while - I don't want to buy and then see prices drop even lower - and that interest rates will be low for a while too. So I realize that there is no rush - but I still don't want to kick myself years from now for missing any "deals of the century". I know this was long - sorry about that - but I think my first post gave the impression that the whole idea of buying at/near a beach, and this one in particular, was hurried and not thought out. While rushing into it right now is undoubtedly a bad idea, I don't think the concept of buying a home sometime soon for retirement in a few years, if the prices and interest rates are really low now, is a bad idea.

Open floor plan, wide doorways, ramps instead of steps, all cabinets fully accessible (none overhead). Basically, universal design with as much handicapped accessible as possible. I'm not "there" yet but I feel for folks that are forced to move from their homes for physical reasons.

Would begin by designing the core of the home you want -- the main floor with a great room as your living area and your master bedroom suite all along the view side of the house. Count on adding a (6'-8' deep porch -- let your upstairs roof cover it so you can enjoy the space year round. Put the bedroom and great room on the side of the house with the view -- and include a room on the driveway side of the house that you can you can close off (control heat exchange) for the stairwell (with stair lift) in the approximate center on the road/driveway side of the house that will lead to the downstairs entry. ' You can put your kitchen with its smaller widows on the driveway side of the house as well as your master suite walk in closets on each side of that center stairwell room. You could put your laundry room with a powder room with their small windows on one end of the driveway side of the house and your master bath on the other end of the driveway side of the house so the frosted windows for each of them could be on the ends of the house rather than the driveway side of the house facing the road. Once you know the size of your main floor living area, you can create a couple of children's bedrooms upstairs within the attic -- steep roof or Mansard roof or Gambrell roof -- with gables with large windows or even sliding glass doors (with balcony) aimed toward the view and have that roof cover the full length porch on the view side of the house -- with the stairwell room between them on the driveway side of the house and a three room jack&jill bath on the view side of the house. Each children's room would have its own powder room along the outside wall with gable and frosted windows and each could access a third interior room between the two powder rooms and hallway with a tub/shower combination unit in it. Once you know the full size of your living area, build a full basement beneath it with a garage and a utility/storage room and, space permitting, a bonus room with small bath behind the stairwell room/entry that could be used as a guest room or home office as needed. By putting your two story porch/stoop and downstairs entry centered in front of the house, you could have one side of the ground floor as your two car garage and the other for your utility/storage and your bonus room with bath and, perhaps, even a screened porch and it not be obvious from the road that your main living area is on the second floor.

We've done a number of bungalow top ups (as well as 3rd floor additions on two-storey houses) and we've found them generally to be quicker and easier than rear additions (chiefly because there is no excavation and footing/foundation work). You also have the option to raise the walls when the roof is off the add ceiling height to the ground floor. Also, by using modern truss joists (the ones that look like I-beams), you have the opportunity to have a completely open plan ground floor with no load-bearing interior walls. We've never had any concerns raised by the architect, structural engineer or building inspectors with respect to the bearing capacity of the existing foundation of any homes we have worked on. A house built in 1974 will almost certainly have a foundation capable of carrying the weight of a 2nd storey addition (as long as it isn't finished with brick, which adds a lot of weight).