Inside Sean of the South’s sweet, historic Alabama home

Sean Dietrich can’t resist making a little joke when visitors arrive at his historic home in the Avondale neighborhood of Birmingham.

“This is Jamie’s house,” he says, opening the front door that he painted a welcoming “Episcopal red.” “I just live in it.”

Jokes aside, it’s hard to tell which half of this couple loves their new house, which they’ve lived in since March, more. Sean, better known as “Sean of the South” – a much-loved writer, talented musician (he sings and plays guitar, piano and accordion) and sought-after speaker – says that each night when he and Jamie sit down at their unique dining room table to eat dinner, they never fail to include among their prayers: “Thank you for this home.”

They’ve waited a long time for it. For years, they lived in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida, where they watched development encroach on the woods around their home. Since 2018, Jamie, a Brewton native with good friends in Birmingham, has had a real estate agent looking for just the right house. Finally, in February, they found it.

Built in 1923, the cottage has a welcoming wraparound porch, complete with a set of rocking chairs Sean built himself, based on Jamie’s grandfather’s original. The house is situated at the end of a street in the popular neighborhood, surrounded by trees. From every window, the view is green.

Sean created replicas of Jamie’s grandfather’s rocking chair for their front porch. (Tamika Moore/ AL.com) AL.com

“I feel like we’re living in Graceland,” Sean says, only to be playfully elbowed in the ribs by Jamie – their house is anything but Graceland-gaudy.

The home’s history is part of its charm. “I always wanted to live in a house that’s older than my grandparents,” says Sean. He and Jamie are only the fifth family to live there in the century since the house was built.

With four bedrooms and three baths on the main floor and finished basement, the 1,900-square-foot house seems to be made for them. Jamie, a trained chef, gets the kitchen of her dreams; Sean, who has become regionally famous for his daily columns, gets an office worthy of his talent.

They share their home with three dogs, Otis Campbell, Thelma Lou and their newest addition, Marigold the Magnificent, who is blind. (A rescue, she came with the name “Marigold,” which happens to be the name of the man character in Sean’s 2019 novel, Stars of Alabama.)

Finally, they have room for their family to spread out, and to host others as well. “We have space to have people over and entertain for the first time ever,” Jamie says.

She still gets emotional when she thinks of their first night in the house. As they drank Prosecco out of red Solo cups and ate cheese and crackers, she remembers the way she and Sean hugged each other tightly in the bright, white kitchen. “We were so grateful to be here,” she says. “We’ve wanted to move for so long.”

She wipes away a tear, thinking of her mom, “Mother Mary,” who died last summer after a long illness. “It’s so bittersweet, of course,” she says. “It was my greatest honor to care for my mother.”

Mother Mary lives on in every room of the house through the antiques Jamie kept – like her prized china cabinet in the corner of the dining room. “Mother had it full of china,” Jamie says. “I have it chock full of liquor.”

At home with Sean and Jamie Dietrich — This china cabinet was a special piece to Jamie’s mother and was one of the pieces she really wanted Jamie to have. (Tamika Moore/ AL.com) AL.com

Sean and Jamie’s dear friend, interior designer Sherry Sandquist, helped Jamie decorate the house with her goal of incorporating antiques “without making it look like an old lady’s house.” After Mother Mary died, Sherry walked through her home with Jamie, picking out pieces she thought Jamie would want for her own future house, which she hadn’t yet found. Sadly, Sherry didn’t get to see Sean and Jamie’s Birmingham home. She died in June, but her influence is everywhere.

“She was able to put her touch on this house without ever visiting,” Jamie says.

Sean paid tribute to Sherry at a recent memorial service. She and her husband, Lyle, had a huge impact on his career. “I wouldn’t be writing if it weren’t for them,” he says.

Among other things, Sherry encouraged Sean to paint. Several of his paintings – some abstract, some self-portraits and some of his favorite subject, Jamie – hang throughout the house. He created the tea-stained map hanging in a handmade frame over the sofa in the den. In addition to the rocking chairs on the porch, he has built several other pieces of furniture, including Jamie’s butcher block table in the laundry room and a bench at the foot of their bed.

In the entry, a small painting of a bird – a gift from Sherry that’s “so small, yet so precious” to Jamie – sits on the buffet. The light-filled living room, with a fireplace flanked by windows and bookshelves, leads into the heart of the house: the dining room, which the kitchen overlooks.

In addition to Mother Mary’s repurposed china cabinet, the dining room holds an impressive armoire that Jamie found in an antiques store in Miramar Beach shortly after she and Sean were married. Her late father bought it for her, and it towered over the main living space of their 800-square-foot, second-floor condo. “That armoire moved from the condo to two other houses before ending up here, where it fits perfectly,” Jamie says. “It’s like it waited 18 years before it found its perfect home here.”

Another prized possession is the dining room table, which was used to display merchandise table at Robbins & McGowin Co., Jamie’s family’s store in downtown Brewton, which sold clothing on one side and hardware on the other. The eight-foot-long table has a burn mark where, the story goes, a lantern overturned one night during a poker game. “I love to think of the stories it could tell,” Jamie says. She jokes that they might not have bought the house if the beloved table hadn’t fit.

“I love to set it with pretty china, Mother’s sterling silver flatware that we use every day, linen napkins and flowers, and gather friends and family around and serve them a wonderful meal.” She tears up, once again, at the thought.

When they have company, there’s plenty of room for guests to sit at mismatched chairs around the table while Jamie works her magic in the kitchen.

During the most recent renovation of the home, a section of brick beside the bar was left exposed in the kitchen, making Jamie feel right at home. “Daddy was a brick salesman, so I love that,” she says.

But she also loves the cabinet space, the farmhouse sink, the chalkboard where a door once stood and, well, everything about the kitchen. “When I opened up the refrigerator, I about died,” she says – it was so roomy. “As a chef, I love the gas stove. And I’ve never had a vent hood!”

The front bedroom now serves as Sean’s office. “I have waited so long to have an office,” he says. His desk, which he built, sits under a double window overlooking the lush courtyard below, with a stack of mail – potential columns in the making – beside his laptop. Among the treasures he keeps in his office are the ashes of his beloved bloodhound, Ellie Mae.

There’s enough space to hold the piano his mother bought him when he was a child. Three guitars hang on the wall above it. On two walls of the room, and flanking his desk, are floor-to-ceiling bookshelves holding Sean’s collection of volumes that he can now have at his fingertips.

“Lewis Grizzard has his own shelf,” he says of one of his literary heroes.

Sean and Jamie’s bedroom is at the back of the house, with French doors opening to Jamie’s cozy office. On either side of the bed are Mother Mary’s demilune tables and porcelain lamps that were in her bedroom for years.

Downstairs, there’s an oversized laundry room and a comfortable den that they refer to as “the baseball room.” “We watch the Braves in here,” Jamie says. “After dinner, we come down here and all of us get on the sofa.” This room also holds mounted fish Jamie’s father caught, as well as Sean’s collection of signed baseballs and first copies of his books.

There are also two bedrooms and a bathroom in the basement. “We have had more people over than I’ve ever had in my entire life,” Sean says. “The downstairs is always a hotel.”

Not only is the house perfect for them, but the neighborhood affirms their decision to move to Birmingham. “Neither of us has lived in a city before,” Sean says. “I was a little scared of not being around nature. But we’ve gone hiking here more than ever.” He also enjoys the proximity of “a different brewery every night.”

After a night out or a few nights on the road, returning to their sanctuary is always a joy.

“I get so excited to go home,” Jamie says. “I love it so much. Mother Mary would be so, so proud.”

Sean Dietrich’s latest book, You Are My Sunshine, will be released Oct. 11. It’s an account of the long bike ride he and Jamie took together along The Great Allegheny Passage and the C&O Canal Towpath trail during the pandemic.