Design mockup · not a live property

The Dunning HouseElm Hill, Excelsior Springs, Missouri

(816) 555-0142

Nine rooms,
listed by how far
you carry the bag.

The Dunning House is a house. Somebody built it to live in and somebody else, later, put numbers on the doors.

No elevator, no lobby, nobody at a desk after ten. Breakfast is at one table at eight and there is one thing cooked. Nine doors: three on the ground floor, four up eighteen stairs, two up thirty-two.

Every room below is written with its worst feature first, because that is the part you would otherwise find out at half past one in the morning.

Call (816) 555-0142

Answered between eight in the morning and eight at night.

A well kept two-storey white clapboard house on an overcast afternoon, with a wraparound covered porch, white rocking chairs, a green metal porch roof, hydrangea along the foundation and a gravel drive.
Elm Hill, looking north. The gravel strip holds six cars and the sixth one blocks the fifth.

The room list

Sorted by stairs, not by price, because stairs are what the telephone gets asked about. Every figure below is an illustration for a design mockup and nothing on this page can be reserved.

No stairs

Ground floor · three rooms · in the front door and you are there

1

The Back Parlour

$148 illustration only

One queen · private bath across the hall

The catch. It shares a wall with the kitchen, so from twenty past six you hear the oven door, the tap, and two people not bothering to whisper.

Largest room in the house, and eleven steps from the coffee.

2

Sherman

$126 illustration only

Two doubles · bath in room

The catch. The one window faces the neighbour’s garage wall, twelve feet off. Darkest room in the building at any hour, and the lamp stays on.

Also the quietest. People who work nights ask for it by name.

3

The Sun Room

$154 illustration only

One queen · bath in room

The catch. Three walls of window and no curtain that fully closes. June has you awake at five, and January is cold enough that the radiator does not quite win.

Nobody who had it in October has since asked for a different room.

Looking up a bright wooden staircase in an old house, with a patterned stair runner, a white painted banister, and a plain wooden chair on the landing at the top.
Eighteen stairs to the second floor, fourteen more to the attic. There is a landing at nine, and a chair on it, and the chair is there for a reason. If the stairs are the question, say so on the telephone and take one of the first three rooms.

Eighteen stairs

Second floor · four rooms · one turn at the landing, handrail the whole way

4

Room Four

$168 illustration only

One king · bath in room

The catch. It sits over the front porch. The porch light burns all night, and the boards below announce every late arrival.

The only king, and the one bathroom with room to stand in.

5

Room Five

$152 illustration only

One queen · bath in room

The catch. Best light in the house and the smallest bathroom in it. The shower is a corner unit and anyone over six foot will find the head of it low.

Two windows, east and south, and a writing table under the east one.

6

Room Six

$134 illustration only

Two twins · bath in room

The catch. The radiator knocks. It has been bled twice a year for eleven years and it knocks. Quiet by eleven, going again a little after five.

Warmest room on the floor from October to April, which is the same fact from the other side.

7

Room Seven

$162 illustration only

One queen and a daybed · bath in room

The catch. It is at the back of the floor, so the way in passes Room Six’s door close enough that you will walk quietly past it at night.

The only tub on feet, and the daybed makes it the room families take.

Thirty-two stairs

Third floor · two rooms · the second flight is narrower and turns twice

8

The East Attic

$142 illustration only

One queen · bath in room

The catch. Thirty-two stairs with a bag, and a ceiling that slopes to the floor on the north side. You will hit your head on it once, the first night.

The dormer looks the length of Elm Hill, which in the evening is the best thing here.

9

The West Attic

$104 illustration only

One double · bath one floor down

The catch. Same stairs, same ceiling, smallest room in the house, and the bath is a floor below. We talk people out of it about half the time they ask.

Cheapest bed in the building, and a real room. In April people take it for a week.

A small attic bedroom with the ceiling sloping steeply to the floor on one side, a plain bed, a bentwood chair and a dormer window letting in low evening light.
The east attic in the hour before supper. The ceiling is at five foot two where the bed meets the wall.

In every room, and not in any of them

A plain guest bedroom with a white iron bedstead, a cotton coverlet, a cast iron radiator under a tall sash window, a wooden chair, a row of coat hooks and a small cupboard with a brass reading lamp on it.
A ground-floor room, made up on a Thursday. The radiator is original, the mattress is not, and the brass lamp is the same in all nine rooms because it is the one that has not broken.

In every room

  • Cotton sheets, ironed, and a second blanket folded at the foot
  • Two bath towels each, and more at any hour for the asking
  • A lamp you can switch off without getting out of bed
  • A box fan, because the house was built before anyone thought about it
  • A chair, a small cupboard, and hooks with wooden hangers on them
  • A real key on a fob too big to put in a pocket and lose

Not in any room

  • A television, a safe, a minibar or a coffee maker
  • A telephone. The one in the hall works and you are welcome to it
  • Room service, at any hour, in any form
  • Air conditioning on the third floor. One to seven have it, eight and nine have the fan and the window
  • A wall thick enough that you will not hear the stairs
  • A booking button. Rooms are held by telephone and written in a book
The covered front porch of an old house at night, lit by a single bare bulb over the screen door, with a wooden rocking chair and darkness beyond the porch rail.

If you are getting in after ten

The front door is locked at ten and nobody sits up.

Telephone before six on the day and say roughly when. The key goes in the grey box on the left-hand porch post, in an envelope with your name on it, and the code is the last four figures of the number you called from. The porch light stays on whatever the season.

Inside there is a lamp left burning at the bottom of the stairs, water and two glasses on the sideboard, and half a loaf under a cloth with a knife beside it. The kitchen is shut and the refrigerator is not yours, but nobody has gone up those stairs hungry.

If it is later than you thought, or the weather turned, telephone anyway. The alternative is a light left on for somebody who is not coming.

One long wooden table laid for eight with mismatched plates and cups, in a plain dining room with morning light through a lace-curtained window.

Eight o’clock, one table, one thing cooked

Everybody eats at the same table at the same time. There is no menu, because nine rooms will not carry a kitchen that offers one. Say on the telephone what you cannot eat and it is handled without a conversation about it at the table.

Eggs from a house out on Route H, something baked that morning, fruit, and coffee until the pot is empty. Saturday is biscuits and gravy and has been for as long as anyone here remembers.

If eight is no good there is coffee going by six and something wrapped to take with you. People working out at the plant do it every week and nobody thinks anything of it.

Who is usually in the house

  1. 01Somebody’s aunt and uncle, in town for a wedding that filled the larger hotel first. They want an iron, and they are gone before breakfast on Sunday.
  2. 02A man on a job at the plant with Room Two from Monday to Thursday for as long as the job runs. Out by half past five, and he does not want to be talked to.
  3. 03A family who are at the hospital every day and are not on a holiday. Ground floor if it is free, told where the laundry is, and then left alone.
  4. 04One person a month who booked the West Attic on purpose and wants nothing at all except somewhere quiet with a book for two days.

Holding a room

A telephone number, a name, and a night. That is the whole procedure.

  • The number(816) 555-0142
  • AnsweredEight to eight, every day
  • Written inA hardback book on the hall table
  • PaidWhen you arrive, not before
  • ChangedTelephone. It is nine rooms, not an airline

Call (816) 555-0142

Ask which room. About half the time the answer is that the one you asked about is the wrong one for you, and here is why.