As the prospect of retirement looms not too many years down the road, I am considering living arrangements in whatever congenial clime Mrs. J. and I wind up in.
It’d be a shame if our happy domestic life was altered by my being home a lot more (I suspect Mrs. J. unjustifiably fears that I will hang around all day in a bathrobe, correcting the Internet). Partly for that reason and others, I’m considering constructing a hut on the property separate from the main house, like the retired sea captain in Conan Doyle’s The Adventure of Black Peter. Readers of this classic Sherlock Holmes tale will remember Black Peter, one-time master of the Sea Unicorn, who lived in a hut made up to look like the cabin of a sea captain, complete with harpoons, whale skins, vats of blubber, kegs of rum et cetera. While this arrangement ultimately did not turn out well for Black Peter, I feel I could successfully emulate his style (already ruled out - a hut made up to look like a pathology department cutting room, complete with dissecting tools and containers of body parts).
One option is to have sleeping quarters constructed as part of a detached greenhouse. I could live in there, watch over the greenery and keep a cat (Mrs. J. likes them but is highly allergic). Or I could have a rustic dwelling similar to but less effete than the mother-in-law apartment that existed on a piece of property we prevously owned, and which was mainly used to store hurricane survival supplies. I would like indoor plumbing and Wi-Fi, but have few other demands. Think Unabomber cabin, with upgrades.
Realizing that some men’s attempts at design/decoration do not turn out well (like this big game hunter’s cozy retreat), I welcome suggestions on how to create my Dream Hut.
*apparently detached cottages/retreats (“she-sheds”) are becoming popular among women, who desire a little place of their own to knit, work out, drink wine in their yoga pants and wear pussy hats without fear of ridicule.
Roald Dahl and Hemingway both had special little writing places. Dahl’s was a hut in the back yard; Hemingway’s, on Key West anyone, was the room above the garage. Both unique to their personalities, and very manly in different ways.
My husband’s is his audio room. It’s in a detached workshop, and it’s where he keeps his vinyl collection, tube amps, turntables, and Klipsch speakers (it is more or less climate controlled). He has an old sofa and catches wifi from the house with some kind of antenna. He can spend twelve hours a day out there.
There are plenty of man sheds and man caves out on the internet as well.
My dad used his icehouse for the first five years of retirement - in the Summer he used the boathouse.
I think one needs electricity - for that internet and tv watching. Its nice to have a bed/couch that one can take a nap on without waking up to dirty looks from the spouse. You need a spot to eat and somewhere to keep food handy (so you don’t need to run up to the house every time you need a beverage or chips) and such place has to be animal proof. But you can run into the house for potty breaks.
In a cold climate, a heater may be necessary to get through the Winter months, unless you marriage can stand that much togetherness.
I’d want books, myself. And in addition to a couch for napping, I’d like a comfy chair - room for maybe four people to sit comfortably so my wine can be drunk with friends.
You need a lock on the door so it doesn’t smell like weed when the neighborhood teens find it.
Then it comes down to decor - curtains may not be manly, but I think you want at least shutters so that if you decide to sit around in your underwear your wife won’t notice.
A lot of animal heads ARE overdoing in. We once stayed in a “cabin” that had been in the family of a guy who big game hunted in the 1920s-1930s. It was … overwhelming…to have dinner under the head of a moth eaten lion and a rhino.
If you’ve got any kind of garden you should already have a man cave - what do you think gardens are for!
Electricity is nice but not essential. You can use a gas burner to make tea, or even coffee. Sheds tend to be much improved by radio as opposed to tv, which can use batteries. A comfortable chair is vital for naps, listening to the cricket all day is quite important, as is a bench on which to fiddle about mending things from the 1990s.
I mini fridge for milk and general cooling is excessive and, unless you have something very modern, acoustically imposing; a dark corner or a hole somewhere is okay.
Good luck, and welcome to the world of the righteous.
There are advantages to being male. A wide-mouthed jug with a few inches of cat litter in the bottom suffices as a urinal in a garage, shed, or other plumbing-disadvantaged space.
Who’s paying for all this? If you, take the house and give Mrs. J the hut / tent / aged VW microbus nestled in the back 40.
I kid, I kid.
Perhaps you should take a hint from our esteemed poster Panache45. AIUI he and his husband live in in adjacent houses. Both are nice in their own way, but rather like Oscar and Felix their preferred living styles are incompatible. So each gets what he wants the way he wants it.
I admit I don’t really get the urge. We are now (early) retired but we already have a house with more rooms than two people need so we both live in the house. I would not want to leave my nice house to go sit in a shed.
Michael Pollan did this too, and wrote a book about it. “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” it’s not, however; I found it extremely tedious and gave up maybe 20 or 30 pages in. :dubious:
Well, thanks for the suggestions. The EcoCapsule looks interesting, if a bit pricey.
I may wind up living like the deep woods trappers Willie Sutton described in his autobiography. They were apparitional figures with long beards who came by the prison at Dannemora every spring to collect old inmates’ clothing and then melted back into the forest. I could show up periodically at Mrs. J.'s kitchen door for pie.
