House Dreams

This is whin­ing, and I know it. Most folks should prob­a­bly skip it.

Edit: It turned into lots of dream­ing, too.

There were many things to dis­like about our house in Stone Moun­tain. I cer­tain­ly don’t miss the land­lord or the fact that it was impos­si­ble to enter or leave the house with­out going up or down stairs. I don’t miss the sep­tic tank prob­lems (and the ensu­ing back­yard marsh), the ants, or the not-up-to-code wiring at all.

I do, how­ev­er, miss hav­ing a sep­a­rate space for enter­tain­ing. I miss that a LOT. It was great for Sam and the kids to have stuff going on in the play­room when I did­n’t feel up to being around vis­i­tors. We don’t have that here in the apart­ment, and it’ll be a year or two (prob­a­bly two at least) before we have that in the Castle.

My ide­al house would have great big bed­rooms, prefer­ably with bath­rooms and sit­ting areas for every­one. Yep, that’s extrav­a­gant. I’m dream­ing, okay?

It would have two mas­ter suites on the main floor. Both of them would have sybarit­ic bath­rooms with huge garden/jacuzzi tubs. Ooooh, I just had a vision of a roman tub. (sigh) I want a fire­place in my sit­ting area. And pos­si­bly a lit­tle wet-bar type area in each mas­ter suite—dorm fridge, lit­tle microwave, cof­fee pot, toast­er. Yes, some­times I feel THAT insular.

It would have enough bed­rooms for at least two, maybe three guest rooms.

By pref­er­ence, the bed­rooms would be spread around the house to add to the pri­va­cy of each one. In fact, the sit­ting area of each bed­room would be where one enters from the rest of the house, to give the actu­al bed­room a lit­tle more insulation/isolation.

It would have a HUGE kitchen that flowed into a great room big enough for lots of friends and fam­i­ly to sit and talk and enjoy a nice fire (in the big fire­place) and game or watch a movie. I want a good place for a piano and mak­ing music in gen­er­al in that room.

I want deep, com­fy fur­ni­ture that’s soft and sup­port­ive, like our cur­rent sofa. I want small tables and great lamps in all the right places. I want can­dle sconces, too, and ceil­ing fans absolute­ly every­where. There will be NO rooms with­out good over­head and task lighting.

It would have anoth­er roomy enter­tain­ing space locat­ed away from the main liv­ing area—possibly with its own entrance. That space would have a half-bath and a kitch­enette, and either com­mer­cial-grade car­pet or hard floor­ing. I think hard floor­ing would be best, for dance prac­tice. The walls would be fin­ished with some­thing that just could­n’t be messed up easily—maybe that paint that makes walls into mark­er boards? The fur­ni­ture would be flex­i­ble and again, dif­fi­cult to dam­age. It has to be able to be pushed against the walls or stacked for dance/martial arts prac­tice, and we’d need to have stor­age for the good exer­cise mats to make the mar­tial arts prac­tice safe. One wall may need to be mir­rored, with a barre.

If I real­ly had my druthers, that enter­tain­ing space would be in its own build­ing and arranged so as to have its own dri­ve and park­ing, so that it could be used for com­mu­ni­ty gath­er­ings and the like. It might have a sec­ond floor with bunk beds and a bath­room suit­able for such space. In that case, instead of a kitch­enette, it would need a real kitchen, some­thing like those found in church fel­low­ship halls.

Any­way, that oth­er enter­tain­ing space would be dec­o­rat­ed large­ly by shad­owkatt and any oth­er kids liv­ing in the house. They’d pick the feel and the col­ors. It would have a great sound/video sys­tem, and a LAN set up just for com­put­er gaming—one com­plete­ly sep­a­rate from the main LAN.

The house would have a big library/office—again, pos­si­bly with its own entrance. In fact, I think I want a serv­er clos­et with a, okay, the word is missing—punch-something board? The room has to have room for mul­ti­ple desks, files, scads and scads and scads of built-in book­shelves, and a library table for spread­ing out projects and research. It also needs com­fy not-desk seats.

All the ceil­ings would be high enough to feel airy, and there would be lots and lots of light (nat­ur­al and man-made). The whole place would have lots and lots and lots of big clos­ets and great stor­age in every way.

We’d have net­work, phone, and cable TV jacks in every room. Oh, and speak­ers. Yep, need music every­where. I want some sort of inter­com thing—the three sta­tions we have now are great, but can’t be expand­ed. That works SO much bet­ter than yelling! I want a wire­less net­work, but out­fit­ting all the PCs with wire­less net­work adapters when we’ve already got the reg­u­lar sort and router and all is rather foolish.

I want a sun­room that’s almost a greenhouse—plants every­where, flow­ing water, sub­tle air cir­cu­la­tion that feels like breezes, and cat­walks every­where for the actu­al cats.

There would be a mar­velous stu­dio for pot­tery and oth­er messy art­ing. Incred­i­ble light there, especially.

We need a good work­shop for build­ing projects.

The yard main­ly needs to be big enough to insu­late us from neigh­bors. I want fresh flow­ers all the time, fresh veg­gies, and fresh herbs. I don’t want to both­er with a waste of resources like plain old grass. Since I’m aller­gic to the out­side world, there’s a real dis­con­nect here between my abil­i­ties and desires—somebody else would have to actu­al­ly tend to the gar­dens, which isn’t fair.

We need out­door enter­tain­ing space, as well—preferably placed so as to flow nat­u­ral­ly out of the kitchen/great room. Nice seat­ing, good shade, light­ing, a big grill for the sam­bear, maybe one of those chiminea things for heat on chilly nights. 

Hell, while I’m dream­ing I want a heat­ed pool and a great big hot tub. I’ve dreamed about hot-tub gam­ing for years!

I want a big front porch that invites peo­ple to sit down and chat or read or just look at the stars. I’d like to live in a place with a lot less light pol­lu­tion than in the main metro Atlanta areas. I want exu­ber­ant flow­ers trail­ing out of their bas­kets to per­fume the air.

The yard should be fenced in such a way as to allow a dog to go in and out of the house using a dog­gie door to do his business.

I want a great play­space in the yard—swings and climb­ing things and slides, with land­ing-friend­ly foot­ing. And a love­ly tree­house for the cat-girl.

We’d have enough garage for the fam­i­ly’s vehi­cles, and a dri­ve­way that gave park­ing space for a rea­son­able num­ber of visitors.

I want damned good baby gates in the appro­pri­ate places—top and bot­tom of each stair­way, etc. Even when we don’t have lit­tluns in our home, I want to encour­age those who do have them to come to visit.

There would be true zoned heat­ing and cool­ing, a whole-house air clean­er, and a humidifier/dehumidifier system. 

Come to think of it, I don’t want any car­pets. I love hard­wood floors and the accent of just the right rug in the right place.

I want col­or­ful walls with beau­ti­ful things hang­ing on them.

I saw blinds that are WITHIN the panes of win­dows so that you nev­er have to clean them which are incred­i­bly tempt­ing to me. The con­trols are out­side, so you can open/close/raise/lower them.

Things would be set up so that sound does­n’t car­ry well in the house, to cut down on noise pollution.

We’d have solar and oth­er alter­na­tive ener­gy sources set up, with fil­tered water every­where. (I am very sen­si­tive to chlo­rine.) And a rain­wa­ter catch sys­tem, for use in the gar­dens when there are out­door water­ing bans. Maybe even a gen­er­a­tor. Cer­tain­ly UPSs on the vital things, like servers.

Edit: I want instant REALLY hot water ALL THE TIME that nev­er runs out. Lots and lots. I don’t want to wor­ry about whether any­body needs to take a show­er when I start the laun­dry or the dish­wash­er. And I want REALLY good water pressure.

If we have more than one floor (and I think that would make the best use of the real estate), we’d have either an ele­va­tor or at least a stair­chair, so that every floor is acces­si­ble to every­one. In fact, the house would need to be wheel­chair acces­si­ble, peri­od. I want door levers instead of round han­dles, grip bars and so on in the bath­rooms, etc. BEFORE we or any­one else need them.

I like the idea of hav­ing a sep­a­rate apartment—either for retired par­ents or long-term guests, maybe to be used by friends who need a lit­tle help to get on their feet.

Edit: I also want a cat­box place on each floor. I want a place that isn’t used for any­thing else, so the door is nev­er closed or some­thing when a cat needs to get to it. I want a hard floor (linoleum or some­thing sim­i­lar) and a REALLY good exhaust fan in there, and that it be in a place where no mat­ter how much lit­ter they kick out of the box, we don’t have to walk in it.

I real­ize that this dream goes well beyond the McMan­sion stage. It’s a dream, though, okay? And dream­ing does feel bet­ter than whining.