A suburban Florida castle with fairy-tale flair: Go inside this distinct $1.22M home

A house donning a turret in fairy tale flair is up for sale by the man who helped his father build it.

The home, according to the listing by Janine Arrowsmith at NextHome Arrowsmith Realty, is a four-bed, three and a half bath house set on a lake in Apopka, Florida, northeast of Orlando. Listed for $1.225 million, it is clear from the outside the house has a little something special.

"People still today will stop and take pictures. It's amazing," the home's owner Michael Cooper told USA TODAY in an interview. "I'll be out there cutting the grass, and people stop...When you lived there for 20 years it's like, 'What are you guys doing? It's just a house.'"

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Florida home owner built castle house with his dad

Cooper said he helped his dad build the house when he was in his early 20s. It was a spec home that they sold to an older gentleman in 1989, but Cooper moved back in 2005 when the home's first resident passed away, he said.

As they were building it, Cooper was perplexed by his dad's design choices. Cooper said his father is now 81 years old and still designing houses, many of them with creative looks like this one.

"All of his houses are very different," Cooper said. "He's got a very good imagination when it comes to architecture."

With Cooper's two sons grown up and out of the house, he and his wife were ready to downsize to a different home in the neighborhood.

"The fun part about it was when you was when you build it and then you live in it, that kind of makes it special," he said.