In every neighborhood, there’s one house in particular where all the kids want to hang out. And in Bay Ridge, that house belongs to Dale and Melissa Overmyer. Children are everywhere: running around the yard, lazing on the porch, zooming up and down the driveway on bikes. “We allow our kids to run—literally run—around,” says Melissa Overmyer, a graphic designer and mother of four. “We didn’t want to make the house so precious that they and their friends couldn’t have a good time. It’s a really fun atmosphere.”

And with one step inside the Victorian cottage, the attraction is obvious. The Overmyers have created a campy retreat doused in Hawaiiana, where statuettes of hula girls shimmy next to grinning tiki glasses, neon pink fishing lures serve as lamp pulls, and vintage tropical fabrics enliven the laid-back scene. “Everything’s sentimental in here but nothing’s irreplaceable,” says Melissa.

In 2000, when the Overmyers bought the late-nineteenth-century house, it was in near-condemned condition, abandoned for nearly twenty years and taken over by raccoons and encroaching weeds. Perched atop cliffs overlooking the Chesapeake Bay, the home’s location sealed the deal for the couple, who bought the property just hours after their first walk-through. “It was so far gone,” recalls Dale, who runs an architectural firm in Washington, D.C., where the family lives year-round. “It was a delicate, fragile old house, but we knew with just a little extra tenderness, we could bring it back.”

What made it even more intriguing was that the house had an interesting past. In the late 1800s, Bay Ridge was a flourishing family resort, attracting visitors who arrived via steamship and rail from as far away as New York. According to Bay Ridge on the Chesapeake: An Illustrated History, it was known as the “Queen Resort of the Chesapeake,” 387-acres of rolling terrain that featured a 1,600-seat restaurant pavilion, four-story hotel, bandstand, amusement park, horse/bicycle racetrack, riding stables, lawn tennis courts—even a small zoo. The summertime highlight was the five toboggan slides that took guests from the terrain’s towering cliffs into the Bay, where lifeguards watched from lifeboats. In 1915, the resort was destroyed by fire, leaving few buildings intact, including the Overmyers’ house, built in 1893 by British-born George Buffham, a one-time resort manager and photographer.

Now considered one of the area’s most exclusive communities, Bay Ridge is a safe haven where the Overmyer children and their pals can roam free on the quiet, tree-lined streets or on the roughly three miles of beach, just two blocks from their front door. “I really like that the neighborhood is nice and that all the kids can skateboard and swim and jump off the dock,” says thirteen-year-old Lily Overmyer. “We even have a tree fort in the back yard.”

“From our bruised legs and tangled hair, you can tell that we’re outdoor kids,” adds fifteen-year-old Emma. “We like being able to play outside. It’s one of our favorite things.”

It took a year for the Overmyers to complete the restoration, which involved gutting both floors while preserving original architectural details, such as the gingerbread moldings, windows, and wooden flooring.

Throughout, the walls were given a fresh coat of white paint while the floors were painted black and topped with neutral-tone sisal rugs, allowing the accent colors of the boldly patterned floral fabrics to add visual punch. The result is a hybrid style, best defined as shabby-chic Polynesian. “I wanted it to look like your grandmother had gone to Hawaii and gone crazy,” says Melissa, who vacationed with her family regularly in Hawaii as a child. “A true getaway.”

The screen porch is the spot for summertime gatherings. Amid the tangle of bikes and scooters and flip-flops is a vintage glider, hemmed by tin side tables, and a roomy hammock, a house-warming present from a neighbor that’s capable of holding up to six passengers—more if they’re pint-sized. The far corner holds a dining room table, where the family enjoys most of their summertime meals. “In D.C., people take their work very seriously,” says Dale, an avid surfer, who brings the family on his yearly pilgrimages to Oahu’s North Shore. “But here, people take their playtime very seriously. There’s a beach happy hour almost every night. And that turns into a bonfire and that turns into dinner and that turns into s’mores. It’s very laid back.”

But there’s nothing low-key about the tiki parties at the Overmyers’. Melissa explains that guests, sporting leis and Hawaiian shirts and sipping fruity drinks with paper umbrellas, tend to congregate in the living room, an open space filled with natural light that pours through skylights added during the restoration. Here, the focal point is the bark cloth fabric, a vintage swirl of cranes and palm leaves, which covers the bamboo and rattan furniture, bought at the Georgetown Flea Market. And who says paint-by-numbers art is passé? Framed garage sale-found pieces of the 1970s fad hang throughout the house alongside 1940s airbrush art of birds and flowers. Echoing the Hawaiian theme are the scads of tropical-print throw pillows that dramatically cushion the wall-length window seat in the adjoining room. When the sun goes down, the blender gets whirring and the disco ball, Melissa’s whimsical answer to a chandelier, is called into action. “We love to dance,” she says. “Life is always more fun with a disco ball above your head. You never know when you’ll want to boogie.”

Extending the playful Polynesian theme into the bedrooms, Melissa dressed up the Pink Room with a canopy of grass skirts and paper lanterns. Each petite space, outfitted with texture-inducing bead board walls and chenille bed spreads, is defined by its own unique collection: The Green Room displays circa-1940s touristy straw luggage, while the Blue Bird Room is filled with antique blue birds. “If it looks tropical, I love it,” says Melissa. “And if it has bamboo on it, I’m a complete sucker.”

The collectible theme continues in the dining room, where tin trays perch below ’40s and ’50s wedding cake toppers and Frosty the Snowman mugs sit on a sill alongside an array of salt and pepper shakers. Melissa’s all-time favorite item? A surfer girl shaker set found in Hawaii: The brown-skinned beauty is the pepper and her long board, the salt.

The adjoining kitchen is a rudimentary space made functional with recycled materials, from the stainless-steel countertops, red-and-white dishware, and utensils bought for less than $500 from a Chinese restaurant’s going-out-of-business sale. The stove was rescued from one of Dale’s job sites, while the porcelain farmhouse-style sink was discovered in the home’s basement. But the crown jewel is the milkshake maker, a rewired hand-me-down from Melissa’s grandmother, who owned a soda shop in Texas. “Everything’s left over from somewhere,” says Dale.

“Our contractors laughed at us because we kept putting in old things,” adds Melissa.

After the beach bonfires have burned down and the kids have been tucked in, the Overmyers like to kick back and enjoy their beach-house blessings, knowing that next weekend will bring more fun at the beach—and at the Saturday morning flea markets. “Dale says we’re done,” says Melissa. “But I say we’re never done.”