Architecture

We just had a fun visit from a young couple who live down the road. She's with the Maine State Historical Society and doing a thing for the local historical society about the houses on this road, so they ran all over our house ooh-ing and ah-ing and showing us things we'd never seen or wouldn't have known what they were if we had. There are rosettes scored into the wood of the oven door and the mantle in the parlor which were apparently made with a three-tined fork. Eor and I suspect this is like kids these days putting stickers all over the furniture.

Her educated guess as to the history of our house and why it's so weird in it's underpinnings (making it difficult to shore up properly) is that the part the kitchen is in was the original house, with the door at one end and the chimney at the other, a large room and a small room downstairs and same upstairs. It's called a half-colonial, and was very popular in the town in Massachusetts from which the first settlers of this town came. Then they built a whole full colonial [ETA: Federal, sorry] at a 90 degree angle to the first house, in the process adding another set of fireplaces back to back with the first chimney.

Well, anyway, it was interesting to us... :)