Living over the store is now “the buzz” hereabouts.
So says Cindy Burch, 38, who with her husband Andrew, 32, has moved into a 35,000-square-foot space above their Dove’s Nest restaurant on Waxahachie’s town square.
“We’re getting a lot of people interested in the old buildings downtown,” Cindy Burch says. “In the next 5 years, you’re going to see a real growth in this type of living here.”
When she says “we’re,” she’s including friends Julie and Bruce Webb, both in their early 30s, who pioneered downtown living when they moved above their folk art gallery 2 years ago.
In this town known for its Victorian homes, located about 30 miles south of Dallas, the Webb and Burch residential choice is a decided departure–but one that the Webbs say they long wanted to make.
“We’re very devoted to our business and we always wanted to live with it,” says Julie Webb.
They married 13 years ago and moved to Waxahachie in 1987, when Bruce Webb inherited his grandparents’ 1950s house.
An early 1900s building with a cast-iron front and a big bay window immediately caught their eye.
“This building was one we used to point out and dream about,” Julie Webb says.
When it became available about four years ago, they moved their Webb Gallery to the bottom floor, formerly a paint store.
The mezzanine became their office, and in 1996, they made the top floor home.
“We didn’t have to do a lot of work,” says Julie Webb, noting that the space once housed Waxahachie’s telephone company and was already divided into five rooms.
“The walls had the wonderful crackly surfaces and chipped paint that we like,” she says. “We did more cleaning than painting.”
The couple’s two dogs had to become accustomed to not having a yard, Julie Webb says: “But I think they like it here. They spend time on the mezzanine when we’re working there, and we walk them five times a day.”
Living downtown “gives us a great feeling of being part of the community,” Julie Webb says. “And we can ride our bikes or walk lots of places. It makes us feel we’re helping the ecology.”
Cindy and Andrew Burch’s 3 1/2-year-old restaurant and an antique mall share the bottom floor of a 1913 building that originally housed a hardware store.
When the couple, who previously lived in a rented house, took over the building’s second floor, “we found we had 6,500 square feet, a freight elevator and antique ponderosa pine floors,” says Cindy Burch. “We toyed with the idea of doing a loft-like apartment.”
They ended up carving 3,500-square-feet into a two-bedroom, two-fireplace, 2 1/2-bath apartment that is furnished in country French.
“It was a major renovation,” Cindy Burch says. “It took 5 months, but we kept the old floors and the old walls with plaster chipping off and showing the brick, so it ended up being warmer than most lofts.”
They moved in in March, and so far, she says, they love living over the restaurant.
“Our main concern was that we would feel more tied to the business,” she says. “It turned out the opposite: We don’t have the drive time, so we can go (home) in the middle of the afternoon now.”
