After spending nearly 40 years just steps away from the Chesapeake Bay, Dennis Baker and his wife Brenda moved inland; just about a mile into “downtown Bavon,” where, with the help of skilled contractors, they have nearly finished renovating an old waterman’s home with the most intricate of details.

About four decades ago, the Bakers purchased a small cottage on Bavon Beach, which Dennis called a “tar paper shack with a pitcher pump, outhouse and no heat and air.” Though they loved their beach cottage and put years of work into it, the fact that it was only “four feet, three inches” above sea level forced them to sell. “We wanted to get out of the flood zone,” he said.

The Bakers also sold their home in Richmond—both places sold within a month of putting them on the market. “We were homeless for three months,” Dennis joked, after their beach home sold and before they closed on their “new” home on Ci...