Tell me about your dream house

In My Humble Opinion
1

Me and Mrs Loach are going to start looking for a house in a few months when our situation is a bit more favorable. Our curret house served it’s purpose well. It was a good starter house but it is just too small. To prepare for our hunt I decided to be methodical. We are both going to compile lists of what we are looking for in a house. When we are done we will compare the lists and come up with a combined list. The list will have three categories. 1. What the house must have. 2. What we would like it to have and 3. What the house can not have. A short portion of my list so far:

  1. What the house must have
    4 bedrooms
    a garage
    2 full bathrooms
    No flood plane
    roof that won’t be replaced for a while

  2. What I would like the house to have
    central air conditioning (I can live with window units)
    a pool (I know this is going to be on Mrs Loach’s must list)
    city water/sewer
    gas heat

  3. What the house can not have
    In ground oil tank
    small yard
    In need of immediate, expensive repairs (minor stuff or major improvements that can be put off are fine)

The list is not close to being complete. So, what are your thoughts? Give me your ideas for Casa Del Doper.

2

I’m more or less living in my dream house. Took us a while to find it, but that just gave us lots of time to think about just what a “dream house” is.

A couple things I didn’t see on your list:

  • Location: For us, that meant staying in town. I despise driving, and the last thing I wanted was everything being a 15-20 minute drive away. We also wanted land, so that made things difficult. Ultimately thought we found a house with close to 11 acres, right in town. Gotta love small towns for stuff like that.

  • Floorplan: I’ve lived in homes before that had the traditional 4 square rooms on the first floor - eat-in kitchen, dining room, family room, living room. Our second choice house had that type of floor plan, too. Once I thought about it, I realized we rarely used the formal dining room, preferring to eat in the kitchen or in the living room watching movies. So out went the traditional floor plan, in came the requirement that our dream house have a great room. So now we have one big room that the living room and dining room share, and the kitchen is right off it. We still rarely use the dining room table, but at least we don’t feel like it’s a room we never even walk into.

3

Oh, wow.

Location: A nice, quiet neighborhood, lots of trees, a big park or ravine close by.

Two stories, a bunch of extra bedrooms and bathrooms, big rooms with high ceilings and large windows. Balconies, spiral staircases, gables, round tower rooms…

Polished hardwood floors, leather furniture, cool IKEA-style bookcases and glass tables and such.

A really nice garden outside, maybe a waterfall or a pond, and a treehouse. Definitely a treehouse. :wink:

4

Our next garage will have enough bays for each of the cars, plus one extra for “projects”, whether it be restoring an old car, building something for the house, etc. Also It’ll have a second level above for exercise equipment, additional storage, quiet place to retreat to, whatever. If possible I’d like for it to have an opening where I can set up a telescope and do some stargazing.

I’d like for our next house to be on a cul de sac, in that the traffic would be nil and the kids would have a safe place to play.

We’re kinda partial to two stories and I’d like for the living room to have a vaulted ceiling to improve home theater effects. Slate tile in the kitchen, granite counters, finished attic, smart wiring, yada yada yada.

5

Are you talking a new house, or an old one? Are you thinking about building?

This might sound dumb, but laundry chutes are the greatest. I grew up with one, and, as the father of two kids now, I really miss the thing. And we used it for other stuff as kids too…

An upstairs screen porch is also great, and more common in older homes. We used to have one, and loved it. Sometimes we slept out there in the summer. It was in the back of the house and so had a bit more privacy. You could really get away from it all there.

We have a front porch now, but it doesn’t get much use. The main reason is that it faces west, and when you might sit out there, say after work, it’s pretty hot, and too sunny. The direction your house faces on the lot, and how the sun hits the rooms, is something I never thought of until after we’d lived there for a while.
What else…Hmmmm…a kitchen that more than a few people can hang out in. Ours is too small now and not easy to work in, even for one person.

6

Paid off and self-cleaning.

I’m a simple gal.

7

I am pretty sure we are talking about buying an existing house. Not ancient but not new. A lot of the McMansions that are going up look nice but they are pretty shoddy construction. I don’t trust them (I’m looking at you Hovanian)

A decent sized kitchen is on the must list. Reasonably modern appliances also. I don’t mind having to buy a dishwasher in a few years but I don’t want the headache now.

The direction of the house is something I probably wouldn’t think of. But now that I am I can see it is important. In my parents house the pipes never froze because of the way the house faced. The house across the street had their pipes freeze all the time.

8

hire a good architect. finding a great house that fits your lifestyle is one thing, but designing one from scratch to fit your every want and need is only something an architect can help you with.

architects are not only for rich people. interview a few, you’ll be suprised.

9

The neighborhood. I can make changes to the house, but not the neighborhood.

I would suggest driving buy any house you are thinking about buying several times. Try Friday night. Is it loud? Sunday morning?

I love my current house, but it wasn’t until April, 4 months after we bought it when we could open up the windows at night, that we reallized that trucks idling at the truckstop 1/2 a mile away could be heard in our bedroom at night.

10

I love F. L. Wright houses…in particular, the one built over a waterfall (in Pennsylvania). I love modern houses-big kitchen, livingroom-diningroom-no small rooms all closed off from eacother. Part of the genius of Wright: he realized that you could live much better in a smaller house, if everything was open!
I’m a frustrated modernist-I live in a suburb where every house looks like it was built for the MAYFLOWER people!

11

:eek: You don’t trust Hovnanian??? Why on earth not??? :eek:

:stuck_out_tongue:

12

My dream house always involved a secret room and revolving bookcase, but that might be a little tough to find. :dubious:

13

This is my dream house: Southern Living’s Panama City Idea House Virtual Tour

Perfect for Florida, it has lots of outdoor living areas, an outdoor kitchen (in addition to a conventional kitchen), under-the-house parking where it’s nice and cool, and an outdoor shower (I have one now and use it all the time). The second-floor screened porch (with fireplace for chilly winter nights) is perfect.

It’s kind of like a big treehouse.

14

The road I grew up on is shaped like a giant mirror-image of the letter P. The “stick” part of the P is about two miles, and the “circle” part is about a half mile around, and surrounded by the largest lake in the Carolinas. The middle of the circle is a hill.

I’d like to buy all the houses on the circle part (where I grew up) and tear them down. I’d plant trees where most of them are, and landscape the rest, mostly with gardens and statues. Maybe a bush maze or two. Definitely a few fountains.

In the middle, on top of the hill, would be my castle. And I mean literally a castle. An old, medieval style castle. It would be modernized with heating and air conditioning, porches for guests to gather on during parties, several swimming pools, etc, but all the modernizations would be cleverly hidden.

I would gate the road leading in with a huge cast iron gate. My first initial would be on the left side, my last initial on the right.

I would have several golf carts for myself, my friends, and my family to get around the estate. Boats and personal watercraft (“jet skis”) would be parked at the docks.

At one point not long ago I estimated I could do this for a clean $20,000,000, but my parents recently told me that a few houses on the block are selling for seven figures, which will have a domino effect of raising all the property value. Good for my parents, bad for my evil plot. I still figure I could get away with it for under $30 million, and taxes and upkeep should be a mere few hundred thousand a year.

Anyone want to start making donations?

15

No. But some religious types wanting to turn the Carolinas into a new Christian country might :wink:

When did people start calling Monster Homes McMansions? I always think of them as the box that a house comes in…

16

Here’s my idea of a dream house:

I do have some mobility issues to consider so to make it easier to get around the house here’s what I’d like…

Ranch style or 4-Level Split home with no more than 8 stair steps between levels

Main Level Laundry area = I don’t do laundry now because it’s in the basement.

Bathroom off the kitchen

Walk=In Closets (right now there’s only room in our tiny bedroom closet for my husband’s clothes)

Big private bathroom off Master bedroom–(now we just have 1 bathroom we all share)

Screened-in 3 Season Porch off den or dining room (we have one now and love it!)

Mud Room off back door with big closet for coats and boots and other stuff (our closet by our front door is tiny!)

Storage room-- We love this house for all the storage it has–everywhere but the bedroom closets!!

Pool–I really, really, really want a pool! (It would be such good therapy for my stiff hips and back)

Big level driveway–(our current driveway slopes too much and balls would roll out into the busy freeway right in front of our house, causing horrible crashes…but we’ve forbidden our girls and their friends never, I mean never play with balls in our driveway!)

Speaking of living off a very busy freeway (speed limit is 50 but they go about 55)
it is noisy. Did I say it loud enough? It’s noisy!! We have to keep our windows closed up tight even in the summer to hear the TV in the livingroom. Every time someone opens the front door, it sounds like the traffic is coming right in the house! When someone comes to the door, you can’t hear a word they’re saying, so you either have to invite them in, or send them on their way. So, guess what my next request is:

Quiet street–I want to live on a street where my girls can ride their bikes safely without fear of being squished like potato bugs as soon as they leave the driveway! That’s all I’m asking!

17

Not necessarily. We have a secret room behind a bookshelf. Bookshelf doesn’t rotate, but I can’t imagine it would take much to MAKE it rotate.

Hmmmm…

18

I’d love a brick house close to the city. I’d really like one of the old Victorian mansions - I love those houses. And the house would have a wrap-around or at least a substantial porch where we could put a swing or something and sit and be porch-monkeys. Plus we’d have a two-car garage, a nice, big kitchen with hardwood floors and a giant master bath with a separate huge tub and a walk-in shower.

I don’t think I’ll get my dream house, though. My husband seems bent on moving to the 'burbs in one of the developments that’s popping up. Which is okay - what could be better than moving into a house where all the paint, flooring and colors are exactly what you’ve chosen? The only thing I really don’t like about it is that all the houses look exactly the same from the back, and there aren’t many trees. But it’s quiet, and my husband made a good point - he said he doesn’t care what it looks like outside as long as it’s roomy and nice inside.

19

You must have a very fast digestive tract.

20

Put ze candle back.