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This old house absurdly has so many bedrooms I have to stop and count. The type is “American Foursquare” popular for forty years from late 19th century into early 20th century. On the internet are pictures, floor plans and advertisements. From Sears Roebuck you could order the whole thing, finished, under $2,500, 

and actually I’m looking at one right now for $966 finished. Don’t know if Pop did that or just bought lumber and had his fishermen start building. It was started in 1912 and finished in 1913 when my father was two years old.

Classic design was a square floor plan, two story, four rooms upstairs and four rooms down, hip roof with short overhang, and a front dormer. Except for two additions that Linda and I added in 1997 and 2002, all interior walls and ceilings are solid tongue-in-groove, no drywall, such that every room is practically soundproof. Thus, if I have my glass of red wine at suppertime and later snore, Linda can get up and steam off into another bedroom, even an adjacent room, and enjoy total quiet.

When my grandparents built the house they modified the foursquare interior. The original building is 33‘ x 32‘ and they put two bedrooms downstairs with the bathroom in between them. Upstairs, two bedrooms instead of four, and the other half of the upstairs space was one large room with a pool table. Outside, instead of just the usual downstairs front porch, they put an upstairs front porch as well. As I’ve written before, during WW2 the house was converted into four apartments, two up and two down, and three bathrooms were added as well as the outside entry that now is our fire-escape.

In 1997 Linda’s stepfather died and her mother moved in with us in the rectory in Apalachicola. It became clear that wasn’t going to work when we would go into the kitchen and find that she had left the gas burners on the stove blazing high. It was even clearer to me when I would go upstairs to bed at night and find my MIL ensconced in the marriage bed, on my side of the bed, watching TV and only leave grudgingly so I could go to bed. So we added rooms to this house, roughly doubling the floorspace, and a kitchen with double refrigerators, dishwashers, ovens and sinks, to make the house bearable for us and two mothers-in-law. That was when we ended up with more bedrooms than I can count without taking off my shoes to count toes. Three bedrooms are currently being used for other living space, otherwise there are four bedrooms downstairs and four bedrooms upstairs. Two bathrooms upstairs, two and a half down. Need a big house looking out across St. Andrews Bay?! It isn’t luxurious by any means, it’s just roomy with all sorts of privacy.

The house isn’t for sale actually. All this came to mind because last night I woke at three o’clock for the usual and instead of coming downstairs, went into one of the “snore rooms” and snuggled in, cool, pitch black dark, and quiet as the God who is the Sound of Silence. Didn’t wake up again until 5:15 a.m. 

Nice.

TW still here in +Time