It started as a joke — the grandparents throwing out the idea that they’d just buy a house to stay in when visiting their far-off family. But it turned into no joke at all, when this two-story, Victorian shotgun-style house was bought, sight unseen — a second home, a place to stay for a month or two at a time, a vacation property in a historical district in a warmer clime. That’s how Dean and Elizabeth Davis ended up owning this West Second Street home in Washington.

The Davis home is part of the Beaufort County Arts Council’s Christmas Tour of Homes, slated for Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Designed to give tour-goers a look into the rooms, and at the holiday decorations, of the 11 houses on display, the tour includes old and new, spacious and cozy homes from Cypress Landing to the Washington Yacht & Country Club.

The Davis home is part of a cluster of homes on West Main Street, Short Drive and West Second Street, in Washington’s historic district. Here, a visitor will find a traditional Victorian home, with the traditional reds and greens of Christmas exterior decorations. Outside, it looks like what it is: a smallish home built near the turn of the 20^th century — the drafty kind with creaking wood floors and time-warped doors that don’t quite fit their frames. But appearances are often deceiving: walk inside and the décor and layout of the home take a bent toward the modern. The floors don’t creak — in fact, the red oak is solid and has a pristine matte finish. The rooms aren’t tiny and cramped — indeed, wide archways from foyer to living room to dining room give this home an open, airy layout that one certainly wouldn’t expect from a home of this age.

The previous owners did much of the fixer-upping: extending what had to have been a cramped kitchen out a few feet, capping the back wall with French doors that look out onto a deck wrapping around two sides; taking out walls to give the living areas downstairs a sense of continuity and spaciousness. But the new owners have continued the process: separating a combination bathroom and laundry room downstairs into unique spaces; refinishing floors throughout the house until the warmth of the red oak poses the perfect counterpoint to the cool blue walls.

While those updates make for great space, it’s the interior design that makes those spaces welcoming. The Davis’ daughter-in-law, Alexis Davis, had more than a hand in that: not only did Alexis Davis find the house, purchase the house on behalf of her in-laws’, she also decorated their vacation-home-away-from-home.

“They loved it,” Davis said of her in-laws first visit to their home, four months after it was purchased. “It blew them away. … Every person who has come in here has said, ‘Wow, this is really pretty.’ I think that’s because it’s in a location where you don’t expect it to be modernized. … It’s cute and it’s historical and it’s kind of unexpected.”

It is modernized, and has the feel of a high-end beach condo on some sunny beach, somewhere — simple, but comfy; incorporating the cool blues and the sandy browns of the seashore. What’s even more surprising is furnishing and décor was kept on a tight budget, so Alexis Davis had to be frugal: a $10 Beaufort County online yard sale purchase of a coffee table, stripped, repainted and distressed looks right at home.

“I went to yard sales and second-hand stores — painted stuff myself,” Alexis Davis said. “I really pinched pennies, but it’s really easy to spend $10,000.”

The result is shabby chic, though much more chic than shabby. Decorated for the homes tour, it now looks like Christmas in a far-off, tropical place — and definitely a place worth visiting.

Tickets to the Christmas Tour of Homes can be purchased at the Turnage Theater Box Office, 150 W. Main St., Washington. Tickets are $20 in advance; $25, the day of the event. For more information, call 252-946-2504.