Alfredo upper floor
Purpose / Function
Connected to the ground floor by the central staircase, this upper floor of Alfredo House was originally a set of suites, intended to give each resident their own space for mending gear or recording their experiences of the most recent ranch work.
Entries
Entry and exit on this floor are properly made via stairwell.
- Entering the stairwell from the south: This steep, dark stairwell leads to the ground floor of Alfredo House. Halfway down it turns eastward, where its angle of descent eases slightly. A particularly tall person might have to stoop for a few of those middle steps.
- Entering the stairwell from the north: This unlit stairwell leads up to the half-floor attic level of Alfredo House. Unlike the lower staircases, this particular stairwell makes no turns at all before it arrives on the attic level.
Alterations
Mauricio and Ludovicus converted part of their parents' suite into a fancy modern indoor washroom while sister Piera was away to Gild'mar on a major cattle drive. Piera was furious -- understandably, as she had proposed to Chica Alston just before the drive started and had her own plans for that year's "ranch construction funds" to build a honeymoon cottage nearby -- but Big Mauri pointed out that Princess and Chica would have the option next year of remodeling the old "servants' quarters" in the attic if they wanted to, and maybe extend some of the indoor plumbing up to their own Ladies' Washroom.
If she thought it was worth it.
After all, mostly the Alfredo-Alstons would be at the newly acquired Sagebrush Barn.
Architecture
The upper story of Alfredo House is not quite as wide in any dimension as the ground floor.
While the staircase gives the spatial illusion that this storey is centered over the ground floor in all directions, actually the washroom overlaps part of the kitchen below, but not the dining room.
The visible floor throughout (most of) this level of the house is dark-stained wood planking, all laid in a north-south orientation. Most interior walls are covered in white plaster with a sponge-dappled effect on the final layer. The ceiling is exposed stone, fitted together with thin adobe bricks and mortar. A tall human could probably stand straight in these rooms without having to remove her hat if she were so crass as to wear her hat indoors.
Noises from other floors are muffled if they travel at all.
Originally the shuttered window at the north end of the central upper hallway was a double door that gave access to a deck. Ludwig de Alfredo had the deck removed while his second child was still a toddler: Ludwig was thoroughly fed up with the annual maintenance and repairs necessary to deck and to lower roof sections after every storm season. He reused the materials from the deck as part of the renovations he donated over at Salers Farm. The former deck is now the most weather-durable section of the tornado shelter on that farm, even if none of the living farm hands were old enough to remember that time the Alfredo Family stepped in to save their parents' livelihoods ... nor why it was so.
Type
Lair
Parent Location
Included Locations
Connected Rooms
Owning Organization
Author's Notes
The map for this level of Alfredo House was created by DramaScape
and used with only a quick rotation (and a LOT of pins!).
It's one of two levels included in the product titled "Old House", added to the DriveThru RPG catalog on July 08th, 2015.
