What would be the odd addition to your dream house?
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?
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.
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?
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.
Heck yes book turret buddies.
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)
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.
Towers or turrets.
Towers go to the foundation.
Turrets start above the first floor.
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.
Maybe a cupola?
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.
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.
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!
Oh, I can relate so hard! Want one too! Cheese is one -if not THE - best invention ever!
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 completely isolated, sound-proof, distractions-free study room.
You're thinking something like this:
I'm talking something like this:
(Yes, this is a thing. Asian thing, I believe.)
Your dream is my nightmare
Asians sometimes work a bit too hard.
I'm a Hongkonger, and we have an internal joke within the entirety of Hong Kong which is "Hongkongers love working"
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 a hidden control room, where I control the internet, piped in music, cameras, security and other automations of the house.
In this way, when there is a complaint of something not working, I just disappear to that room and tinker to my heart's content. Problems mysteriously gets fixed (by me).
This should be a nice and comfortable room, with plenty of space, a bathroom and a skylight.
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.
I'd add a bean bag chair for good measure.
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.
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.
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... 🥺
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.
A bathroom with a urinal.
Pneumatic tube system. Brass steampunk shit like in old banks and skyscrapers would be fine, as would clear plastic ones like drive through pharmacies.
This, but human-sized so I can get around fluidly
A secret passage. I've always wanted one. My parents built their home and I was genuinely disappointed that they skipped this vital element.
A Roman style inner courtyard!
An underground gymnasium. Not a dinky one. Moreso what you have in a high school. A whole bunker facility would be nice as well.
A hidden elevator that leads into a batcave-like place but its just a place for me to play video games without the kids interrupting
A wife.
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 built in, small walk-in refrigerator with TARDIS doors. I want it to be bigger on the inside.
A tower. I'm dreaming of it since I was a child and it's weirdly specific, made from wood with a stone base to the first floor, and the roof has a mechanism to unfold a 1-person balcony. It's not to be above other people, it's more like a "I'm seeing everything but I'm safe and only I can decide who's getting in my tower" -thing. Plus: I love wind and fresh air and hate the feeling of being underground or even trapped in a box. Would base jump and day, but would not set a foot into an underground mine if you give me a million dollars. Some day I'll have a tower... Actually waiting for the land prices around here to fall a bit to buy building ground, no joke. Don't know if my wife says yes to doubling the house building money for a meager tower though, lol
I feel you, mate. My dream is to build my own home, and yes, it's going to be a wizard's tower. I figure I'll lay it out like a shorter, wider lighthouse so I can put the hard stuff like the bathroom and kitchen on the ground floor attachment/hall.
One of these things.
Is that a dragon incubator?
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.
One long stairway only going up, one even longer coming down, and one more leading nowhere just for show.
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.
Too much of Stephen King? ;-)
Although I love the idea, I'm pretty sure that if I visited you I'd never be seen again.
I have bought my dream house. It's old, cranky and somewhat scary. Now I only need the money to be able to return it to its former glory.
What I would want to add to her would be a few hidden compartments, one or two small root cellars to store wine and some balconies. If I really had the money, I'd modify the roof and build a small greenhouse/sunroom, big enough to put two chair and a small bookcase, after stuffing it with plants.
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.
I know music producers have like a room where almost no sound can leak through. I want a room like that. If I'm ever overwhelmed I'll just go to my quiet place :)
I'd have a room dedicated for porn basically. Monitors playing films 24/7, posters on the walls, toys, clothes, dolls etc. all over in huge quantities. Basically if there's a "kinky version" of anything I want it there instead of the ordinary thing. Like a light switch that's a dick you flip up and down etc.
Surprised there aren’t more sex related comments here. My wife and I would love to have a large playroom - say 800sqft - just as a playroom. We’d have sex swings, St. Andrews cross, benches, fuck couches, huge beds with posts for fun activities, sex machine, all the toys could be organized on nice glass shelving.
I’d also want a huge bathroom attached with a hot tub, open showers with benches and for cleanup after play.
Just everything for a night of fun debauchery with friends in the lifestyle
A secondary "dirty" kitchen for butchering and so on, designed to be hosed down for cleaning. It would also probably have a walk in freezer, and that probably counts on its own.
Is that a rimworld reference, because that's prime rimworld base design
No, what's the point of a two layered kitchen in rimworld? It's been a while, though I think I do remember starting to integrate a kitchen into the fridge/freezer airlock area at some point.
Butchering generates filth but only final meal prep checks filth for food poisoning chance. So when you have extra space and resources it's good to separate butchering from cooking to have the lowest chance of food poisoning. Also in an airlock design it keeps colonists from dragging bleeding dead animals through the kitchen.
A cube. A room you enter and every wall, the floor and the roof is projectors or monitors. Displaying a 360 degree video of an environment. Like a forest, on a boat, on top of a mountain. It plays ambient audio fitting to the theme. And I can just lie in the middle and meditate and enjoy.
Probably pointless now that we can do the same with a VR headset. But in that room you could share this with others while also seeing them.
Smash room. You know what I'm talking about. Find an old TV? Smash it! Whats this someone threw away a perfectly good pinata? Smash that sucker!! Get yourself a controller because it's time to play Smash bros!!!! He'll I'll even put Smosh on youtube, it sounds close enough!
Heheh yeaaaa
ooooh...
Find an old CRT TV? Smash Bros!
Not so odd I guess, but a wraparound porch that wraps all the way around the house. Hidden doors, interior layout difficult to figure out. Bees in the garden. But mostly so much porch.
If apartment I'd want a top floor studio, one of those huge all one room places with loft and a ladder or staircase to the roof so the roof would be the porch. Plants, shade up there too.
a bowling alley, so i dont have to go so far to roll a ball at some pins
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:
Cost of excavation and supporting the sides from extra earth pushing in.
Bedrock not being deep enough.
Running into the water table, or risk of flooding.
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.
Treads. Ever seen/read Mortal Engines? Being a traction city sounds very easy when there is no competition. I'm gonna be the new Oberbürgermeister of the Great Hunting Grounds
A toilet in every room.
A bog ass telescope! That or a zeppelin baloon.
Stone vaulted cellar.
An small modular reactor. Off-the-grid energy for the whole town!
A slide. I've always wanted a slide and I've been super vocal about it.
Corpses. Legally acquired corpses buried und the house, maybe some in hidden departments throughout the house. Just to fuck with whoever owns it after me
Urinal in the garage with direct back yard access. My friend has that at his dad's house. Excellent for backyard barbecues.
Cool air piped to four-poster beds so my ground source heat pump has to act on the minimum volume for maximum efficiency.
A workshop with a smithy.
A hot tub, even if I have to redneck engineer it.
A water fountain (bubbler) on my fiancee’s side of the bed.
The computer and VR room would just be a huge open space. Allowing for things to have plenty of room, cooling, and rearranged on a whim. I'd have someone even make some roller sofa chairs that I can put into a giant closet when not in use on one side of the room. I'd end up spending like 90% of my nonsleeping time in this wonderful room.
I just want the Hey Arnold! room, but with cloudy weather for life.... And reinforced glass because of third world country.
Underground lab or walk in greenhouse.