Melanie and Peter Birch weren’t preparing on leaving their 18th-century downtown Charleston, South Carolina, city property. But in 2019, friend and neighborhood designer Sarah Hamlin Hastings available an off-market place deal on her individual too-very good-to-flip-down dwelling just 5 minutes absent around the Ashley River. “We experienced zero desire, actually, in moving out of downtown,” Melanie admits. Nevertheless, when she and Peter observed the McAlpine-renovated 1920s dwelling whose generous rooms opened on to a spectacular backyard garden, they understood it would be properly suited to their like for entertaining. At breakfast collectively the day just after the viewing, they were sold. For the first calendar year, the residence was “livable…