Somehow you’ve gotten your dream home. The cabin in the mountains, penthouse downtown, castle nestled deep in the woods, nuclear bunker in the hills, or whatever. Whats the bit you’d add that might raise a brow from others? The fireman’s pole? The slide? The moat? The hidden room behind a bookshelf where you keep your stuffed animals?
One long stairway only going up, one even longer coming down, and one more leading nowhere just for show.
I want a nap room. Not to be confused with a bedroom, as the bedroom is for sleeping and a nap room… well should be self-evident. Nice climate control, piped in white noise type sound I can change easily (From regular white noise to rainy background to sounds of the woods to lo-fi chillhop), and multiple things to nap in, a hammock, lazyboy, and couch at minimum.
That actually sounds really nice. I’d like to have that addition to my house as well.
I’d add a bean bag chair for good measure.
A walk-in terrarium room.
A conservatory. In a separate building. With huge trees inside.
We need to start thinking scale: Biosphere 2
I want to build a stadium-sized structure with a retractable roof around my house.
I just imagine you having guests over, closing it up and saying something like, “wow looks like its gettin’ real late, I better hit the hay.” as a prelude to kicking them out at like 1 p.m.
If only it weren’t for these pesky clocks.
You gotta hit 'em with the yawn and the big stretch so they know you’re serious.
A cheese room. With lots of cheese. Different kinds, different ages and from different places. But still only cheese. I fuckin’ love cheese!
I would add something similar - place to make food not kitchen.
I like to mess with stuff like homebrewing, cheese making, I butchered some pigs and game…
Smoker and few dedicated fridges for this stuff maybe freezer. Fermenters and other things you need for homebrewing…
When you do it you know that you need lots of specific tools, pots and other things.
Like a… home workshop inspired by a commercial kitchen? With big bay doors you can roll up when it’s canning season. And a drain in the floor so you can just hose it down when you’re done getting messy. I didn’t realize this is a thing I could get on board with!
When we bought our house I claimed an entire room as a pantry for this, because my food preparation (if that’s the right word) needs more space than a kitchen. Do it. It’s awesome. Was the right decision. We have an enormous refrigerator with a freezer in there, a ridiculously strong wire shelf, a pot rack for all the iron skillets, space to store ferments and dry goods and all the tools that don’t live in the kitchen (sous vide stick, blender, waffle iron, etc.). It’s a room without a door that would otherwise have probably been a dining room. I don’t do butchering but it’s right next to a bathroom, if we wanted a prep sink it could be done. I don’t need one though.
Next I want a good bar area near the kitchen, we have a good space for that and that’s where the prep sink will go. Some ferments may move over there too, the drinks ones.
My dad’s friend has it. On the street he lives are few same houses and all of them have few rooms downstairs you can’t make it in to a flat so it is used as garage, workshop, and one room we call party room. It is just a kitchen but separated enough to use it that way. His neighbours use it differently.
Oh, I can relate so hard! Want one too! Cheese is one -if not THE - best invention ever!
A landing strip for model aircraft with lights.
Not my hobby but love the passion. Make sure to add a mini ATC tower, fill it with some birdseed on the upper deck and then let the birds and squirrels help guide you home.
Oh, that’s a great idea. I’l probably build this even if I never get the house with the landing strip.
I’m not sure. Perhaps an art room, a room specializing in every art tool known to mankind, for anyone who is an artist, so they don’t have to return home to make or finish a piece.
Ah so you want to kidnap artists. Smart.
Mine is utterly mundane: I want one of those little tower nook things like on Victorian houses. I think it’s just called a turret?
It’s funny because every other McMansion Hell post makes fun of houses with turrets, but I’m with you… I’d love a 3rd floor turret with windows on all sides for a chillaxing space.
I think it’s one of those things where it has to match the rest of the home.
If you have a fairly standard modern home and just slap a turret on it, it looks ridiculous.
This is my dream too, but I want a retractable roof so I can set up a telescope. Also my house would be in the middle of nowhere so I can see the stars.
Towers or turrets.
Towers go to the foundation.
Turrets start above the first floor.
You are correct, a turret. You and my wife have the same dream. She wants to put a bunch of pillows on the nook and read.
My mom had one of these turrets. I don’t mean to kill the dream but it’s really hot in there in the summer (Virginia)
Heck yes book turret buddies.
Maybe a cupola?
Hidden passageways in all the rooms. Every room will be connected via an intricate maze of crawlspaces, slides, ladders, and all manner of hidden passages. Sure i could use the stairs like a normal person to get to the living room, or i could pull a book off the shelf to reveal a trap door in the floor that leads to a slide downstairs.
So basically Tunt Manor.
A huge garden/green house in the center with fruit trees and berry vines, etc. and in the center of that, a sort of pool/pond. The whole place has a path circling through it with various benches and seats and musical instruments on display/for use. Piano, harp, hurdy gurdy, etc.
Your comment reminded me of this house. https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/5122-31st-Ave-S_Gulfport_FL_33707_M64527-56065
And the more recent story where a lady found an indoor pool in her house and turned it into an indoor pond area.
My wife and I looked at a smaller version of that when hunting for our first house. No way we could have afforded it, though. And there was so much asbestos… 🥺
A Bath Room. No, not a bathroom. A room just for a wide bath, with a fireplace, a window overlooking greenery. A sound system of course. There’ll be a small bookshelf for a choice of relaxed reading, and possibly a fridge at arms length with a choice of relaxing drinks.
I’m down for that, just as long as Moaning Myrtle isn’t there.
Oh, Potter… blushes
A music room, with space for my decks and records, top notch sound system, perfect soundproofing on the walls, a lighting system, a small dancefloor, a bar. Also, it would be hidden behind a bookshelf, as described in OP.
I want two basement levels (at least).
So many special things are possible in that different climate down there.
You know, why don’t we have second basements?
My best friends had two attics, one for the garage and one for the regular home. They were in no way connected.
I meant: two levels below each other, down and deeper down…
Oh. In that case, it’s probably because of foundation. A basement can’t just be dug up out of the ground, it needs to be built in a certain area where you could do that safely and efficiently. If it were possible, I’m certain the bomb shelter boom during the cold war would’ve birthed some second basement levels.
Not sure if this counts, but my best friends technically have one of these as well, they have a semi-homemade indoor pool in the basement and it’s just deep enough to contain a hidden door on the side of its interior, which makes it “below” the regular basement. I’m told it’s an emergency tunnel.
Several factors, depending on geology:
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Cost of excavation and supporting the sides from extra earth pushing in.
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Bedrock not being deep enough.
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Running into the water table, or risk of flooding.
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Cheaper to at another floor on top, which adds more desirable floor space.
Tall commercial buildings with sub-basements already have much deeper foundations than that. And their land is much more expensive.
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A room with perfect everything.
I used to be a painter and did some construction. You would not believe how much I want a perfect room. It’s basically just like Morty on perfectly flat ground; most people wouldn’t get it until they were in it.
I’m talking: sub, foundation, frame, crown, base, millwork, frames, drywall, paint. Everything is meticulous and perfect.
The ground is perfect, the foundation is extremely thick, high gyp, super high quality, perfect. The framing is made of perfect ironwood, no flaws, is perfectly plumb, and is extra thick and rigid with those corner things; the room could be spun by a giant like a basketball. Perfect insulation, the absolute most incredible stuff and a ton of it, like R2000 and perfectly sound insulating -130db down to 0hz. The drywall is six layers thick, all of the corners and curves are perfect with the finest, strongest compound; it’s super smooth and the angles are all perfect because the framing is perfect, because the foundation is perfect, because the ground is perfect. The walls themselves are totally smoothwall, no texture whatsoever, it’s like touching a sheet of metallic plasticized glass, but really it’s just the extremely evenly applied dozen layers of the most advanced exterior coatings known to man; in not going to name names, but it’s fine stuff. All of the coatings on the walls, any millwork or cabinetry, and even the floors are all extremely high brightness white, the whitest white; the stuff that actually kind of glows because it’s converting some uv light to visible spectrum and is basically just pure titanium dioxide suspended in a crystalline structure. There are no chips in anything. No dents, no scratches, no fingerprints, no dust, no oil, no stains. Perfect. It’s well lit with natural light, and augmented with locational, directional, intensity, and temperature active diffuse lighting. The air is perfectly controlled and can have a constant flow of fresh, new air, or to have little to no airflow, depending on what I need in the moment - because having anything be possible on a whim takes the right resources. Sunsets, mornings, afternoons, overcast, nighttime, storms - every setting and energy and vibe is increased tenfold because the room is perfect.
And in this room, nobody goes. It’s my room to be made by me, to be in, to have. I will know everything about it because I’ll have made it myself. The real wealth in this life is the ability to do whatever you want without consequence, because time is the real currency and we must all spend wisely - wealth, though, allows you to spend recklessly because, despite what’s seen on the surface, true wealth affords you to not waste time on being poor and having to work for others with small margins to save: the hours most people spend working and toiling are hours I would spend pursuing projects that are fulfilling to me…
Like the perfect room - an eternal dessert for one’s existence.
A tunnel, as in a disused railway tunnel. Could build in it - rooms, short corridors, leading to other rooms, other corridors - on and on as long as money and cheap building materials allow. Fill it with disturbing symmetries: same objects in the same places over and over. Maybe a giant isopod in formaldehyde.
Although I love the idea, I’m pretty sure that if I visited you I’d never be seen again.
Too much of Stephen King? ;-)
