A dream more than a decade in the making manifested this spring with the opening of St. Francis Cottage, a new bed-and-breakfast inn named for the patron saint of animals, merchants and ecology.
Wallace and Nancy Braud say they've always thought of themselves as innkeepers, but they wanted to make sure their children were doing well before they opened the business.
Their son just graduated from University of California, Berkeley. He's studying for the LSAT and plans to go to law school. Their daughter is married and lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
So Nancy, 62, and Wallace, 64, are filling their retirement years by launching a seven-room bed-and-breakfast, one of only a handful in Chattanooga.
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St. Francis Cottage is at 1349 Gunbarrel Road. Rates range from $130 to $259 per night. For more information, call 423-400-4177 or visit www.stfranciscottage.com.
"We're not getting any younger. We'd better do it now," says Nancy.
They say the name came to them quickly. St. Francis of Assisi was a Roman Catholic friar who came from a wealthy family but gave up everything to follow Christ. He died in 1226 and was canonized in 1228.
"To us, St. Francis of Assisi is one of the better examples of servanthood in the world," says Wallace.
The couple want to exemplify St. Francis' spirit of servanthood to each visitor they welcome into the inn. They will host a grand opening for the property on Thursday.
It took four years of rezoning for a bed-and-breakfast, passing inspections, looking for lenders and trying to grow plants in the midst of a drought, but it's done.
The Brauds quietly opened St. Francis Cottage last month. It's a rustic, ranch-style residence is tucked behind a long, tree-lined driveway.
"We loved to work, and we never could see ourselves retired," says Nancy. "We thought this would be a good culmination of what we've done."
The couple met at the Church of the Redeemer in Houston, Texas, in 1974. They started dating in 1978 and married a year later. In 1982, they both took jobs at Habitat for Humanity International in Americus, Ga., and worked there until 1987 before coming to Chattanooga when Wallace landed a job in the corporate video production industry. He worked in the field for 38 years. Now he's a full-time innkeeper. Nancy still works as a commercial real estate paralegal.
"God's hand has been on this from day one," says Nancy. "The way this all came together was not us at all, so we thought somebody much higher than us had this in mind."
The cottage sits on Gunbarrel Road just two and a half miles away from the bustling commercial district surrounding Hamilton Place, the second largest mall in the state. But there's no sign of busy traffic on top of the hill at the 2.5-acre site. Visitors instead find a butterfly garden.
The Brauds' 3-acre property, where their own home sits, adjoins the site.
Large picture windows frame the dining area and give views of the outdoor flower garden, gravel walking path and bird feeders.
The couple planted 40 blueberry bushes, fruit trees and flowers.
Jamie Roth, a family friend who knew the Brauds before they developed the property, visited St. Francis Cottage while in route to a renaissance festival near Murfreesboro, Tenn. She describes the transformation as "amazing."
"This was all grass," she says standing at the top of the two-level home. "And they had donkeys that ate the grass and kept it low, and there were some flowers, and the barn was on the other side of the property."
Chattanooga residents Peggy and Ed Zizvari came for an overnight stay to celebrate their 25th anniversary.
"Right smack here in the middle of East Brainerd is this nature preserve," says Peggy. "It's very, very relaxing, which is what we needed."
All guests get a Southern-style breakfast that the Brauds cook themselves.
"We like to do the farm-to-table type, home-style Southern food, and we use a lot of organic ingredients," Nancy says.
All the rooms are plush. All have flat-screen TVs and hardwood floors with thick throw carpets. In each is a detailed bathroom vanity handcrafted by Wallace.
Even the rustic-looking library is decked with modern technology, including a large ultra-high-definition flat-screen TV with surround sound and equipment for teleconferencing. The room looks antique but can transform into a boardroom just by unfolding a table.
The bedrooms bear names such as Monarch and Azalea to further evoke the property's sense of serenity.
"Everything around us is developed," says Wallace, "but we've got this little place of quiet."
Contact Yolanda Putman at yputman@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6431.