A location in a nice urban neighborhood. I want to have a connection with my neighbors and easy walking access to restaurants, groceries, a movie theater, etc.
A good outdoor living space where I could keep an outdoor bed, an outdoor dining table, some food prep space, etc. In good weather I only ever want to go in the house to change my clothes and go to the bathroom.
My dream house would probably be on the small side, since I tend to stick to one main room and have pretty simple tastes.
Brilliant! I’ve always wanted one of those 90 second commercial super-dishwashers in my house.
Two things I want is 1.) No stairs…anywhere, and 2.) One room with floor to ceiling windows.
A Japanese-style bath/shower room. Any of the Japanese Dopers know what to call this?
A library with comfy chairs and good lighting.
Lots of built in shelves with doors to display collectibles.
Private movie theater! That’s the absolute biggest thing for me. There are of course many other things, but private movie theater is #1.
Just right for going on top of the circular library!
It must face north with wide verandahs to take advantage of the winter suns whilst blocking out the worst of the summer rays.
It must be built of adobe or pise construction, and every wall will house cupboards and/or shelving for books and other crap. No point in having a wall if it doesn’t DO something!
Floors are to be non-carpeted, IOW, ceramic tiled or wooden floorboards.
It will have solid-fuel heating PLUS underfloor heating AND ducted airconditioning. Not particularly green I will admit, but with the strange things that Aus weather is doing nowadays it’s better to hedge all bets and bugger the costs.
It will have a bore or a natural spring on the land that can be tapped for a permanent water supply. It will NOT be on a floodplain. 
Apart from that, it’ll have a dinky little white picket fence with roses and geraniums in the front garden…alongside the compost bins, water tanks, recycle bins, chookyards and vegie plots.
A reading room with open fire,spot reading lamps,thick carpet,wood paneling.
A party room with a small bar,a sound system and room to dance.
A small gym plus pool.
A dining room with a large oak table for dinner parties(I would hire in the cook for the night though)
Extra bedrooms so that friends could come to stay.
Big picture windows everywhere.
Large garden with deciduous trees and a large pond,plus a grassy area to play football on.
A small stable for two horses.
Preferably out in the middle of exmoor.
If of course my lottery numbers come up.
Robot Monkey Butler.
And in-floor heating. We just completed a bathroom reno including a huge custom shower. Unfortunately, it’s in the coldest corner of the house.
Your tim taylor dish washer reminded me of one of my tim taylor desires.
I WANT a bathroom exhaust vent that does more than make noise. I want it to move so much air that it will suck a scalp off someone if they get too close.
Same goes for the above stove vent.
I hate these wussy exhaust vents that you have to hold a burning cigarrete up close to to even tell that its moving air!
I love imagining my dream house.
It has to have a pool (I’ll settle for a boring outdoor rectangle) and a hot tub.
Oh, yes, the library. Built-in bookshelves on all walls, except for where the fireplace is. It can be a gas fireplace, that’s fine. A window, a lamp and a chair to go in my library.
A big back garden. Surrounded by trees would be lovely, thanks. (Right now, we back onto a regional park, which is very, very nice. Just walk out of the yard and into the woods…)
I would love a front porch with a rocking chair and I’d sit there in the summer and read books and occasionally rise to freshen my gin and water my potted flowering plants.
A full basement for all the stuff that clutters up the place. I’d have it sorted, labeled and stored properly.
Four bedrooms, or three and a den: master with walk-in closet and nice, light, roomy bathroom. Guest room that we can keep nice at all times. (Maybe we’d actually have company!) A bedroom to use as my study/writing room. And another bedroom or den that can be my husband’s sole domain that I would not ever decorate or “tidy”. He can leave Coke cans on the coffee table and Popular Mechanics all over the place and have projects in various states of completion and I wouldn’t touch anything.
An upstairs and a downstairs. A formal living room and a family room (for TV and stuff) off the kitchen. Neither room has to be huge.
At least two full baths. A powder room on the main and in the basement would be lovely as well.
A fenced portion of the yard so I can open the door and just let the dog out to pee and sniff things to her heart’s content.
A rural setting–I like quiet, privacy, woods and dark skies at night.
A fire pit in the backyard! Or an outdoor fireplace. Sitting out in the summer nights with a fire going, conversation, a beverage… bliss!
Better head out and pick up those lottery tickets.
In the city, close to stores, restaurants, activities and metro/bus service!
At least one parking spot, ideally two. No more on-street parking for us!
A dining room with built-in hutch/buffet like we currently have in our rented apartment, and of a similar size. I want a 10-12 person table.
A large bedroom with a well organized closet. At least one more bedroom, but two would be better. We plan to have kids one day, so we need to consider that!
A large kitchen with lots of counter and storage space. Dishwasher is a must. Laundry in it’s own room, and quiet machines, too.
Comfortable living room with a better TV than we have now. I don’t need a full home theatre, though. A comfortable office space, with more than enough room for both our computers and whatever projects we’re working on. Separate offices could work, but I don’t mind sharing!
A large, clean tub (so far everywhere I’ve rented has had small bath tubs with cracked paint/plaster or stains that we can’t seem to remove). A large shower, big enough for two, with a couple of shower heads/jets. NO PINK in the bathroom (our last apartment had pink and white floor tiles, which kind of forced our decorating scheme towards burgundy, and this one was originally painted a god-awful pinkish-purple, which we quickly repainted, only to discover that the toilet has a pale pink handle. WTF?)
A large back yard, with fencing separating us from neighbours (since I doubt we can get very far from them in the city!). Large enough for a nice table, a BBQ, and a bit of room to gather in the summer with friends. Old trees. Not too large that mowing the lawn takes more than a few minutes… neither my husband nor I want large expanses of grass to take care of. We want a dog, so large enough to let a medium-sized dog move around comfortably without being tied up.
We actually are looking to buy within the next couple of years (slowly checking out prices and neighbourhoods, etc), and many of these things are on our must-have list, particularly parking, yard, dishwasher and nice washroom.
ETA: a pool and room for a small home gym in the basement would also be great. I kind of forgot that this was a dream home thread, and not just a “what are you looking for?” thread!
Again, we have a ‘home theater’ but it’s not like anyone is picturing. My partner got into building projectors and built us a very high-quality one and mounted it on the living room wall. There’s a screen rolled up under a crossbeam. The function is the same, but without the theater part. This seems to be a theme for me here - I have so many of the things that other people are mentioning but they’re all sort of hippie/country DIY versions instead of the more elegant things that other people imagine. Probably only my views and gardens and the surrounding woods are on the same scale as others.
My list could get huge, but I will keep is short, and just mention the two things at the top of my list.
In my dream house I would love a huge master bathroom, with a giant sunken jacuzzi tub*.
I would also like a tricked out kitchen, with all the latest gadgets**.
*Our current bath tub is so small that I have only tried to take a bath about 2 times. The water only comes up about 4", so it is pointless. Thankfully we also have a shower.
**I don’t even have a dishwasher now, and my kitchen is tiny.
I am in the fortunate position of turning my current townhome into the vacation house of my dreams. I’m not getting to put in everything but I am getting my top three rooms and an almost perfect backyard.
I want a movie theater with a giant screen and comfortable seating. Unfortunatly the one I’m remodeling is in a room that is 80 sqft. I want all of the other electronics out of the room and controlled by a single remote. A computer will run the whole system and have all of my movies on it so I can watch any movie with out getting off my couch. I will also be able to switch between movies, video games, tv and the computer with a push of the remote.
The next room I want is the bar. A full bar extending off the kitchen so that partys never need to leave the one room. There will be a single tap for Fat Tire and other beers will be kept in bottles in the bar fridge. I will also have a 30 bottle wine cooler. In the front of the bar will be a built in 70 gallon fishtank.
My other must have room is my library in a perfect world I would have a two story one with stained glass windows. As it is I’m knocking out a closet and turning a bedroom into a library. It will have a gas fireplace for those winter nights when you want to curl up with a book after a hard day of skiing. It will also have a hiden chamber for my gun safe. As far as decorating I’m planning on my fishing torphies and a bear skin rug on a hardwood floor.
Of course right now I live in an empty 3 bedroom house with two pieces of furnature and a huge remodleing project infront of me.
Love this thread!
We bought our first home very late in life and brought many such plans and dreams to the humble abode we purchased. As it’s over a century old it came with many charms already, including hardwood flooring throughout, (with beautiful cherry inlay), high ceilings, a walk in pantry, clawfoot tub, large weighted double hung windows, 3 season glassed in porch/sunroom.
Since then we’ve added; pocket doors, floor to ceiling shelves, a woodburning stove, butcherblock countertops and stainless backsplashes to the kitchen, large tv inset and two large ‘in wall’ drawers in the bedroom, a laundry chute, a floor and concealed entry into unused attic space, creating a secret room, (and smoking lounge), fruit trees, berry patches, raised stone bed for veggies, grape arbour, 8 x 10 garden shed, gazebo, rose arbour.
Yet to come; Murphy bed, pedestal sinks, tin ceiling. The list seems endless.
The best part is that ours truly is a very humble home, it’s under 1000 square feet and cost us only $100K. It also sits on the original cistern from before there was city water. One day we’d like to use harvested rainwater again to run the household. It’s also situated extremely well for solar panels and there is easy access to the attic space.
It was a single story Victorian cottage until someone, in about the forty’s, I think, lowered the ceiling in the kitchen, added a tiny set of undersized stairs and a bathroom and masterbedroom upstairs. But it could all be easily reconfigured to accommodate one floor living it come to that.
See? I already have my dream home!
You saw My Fair Lady too, huh? Don’t forget the spiral staircase.
Tons and tons of storage space. THAT’s what I want.
Without looking at any other posts: enough room for a wood shop. Something like 800 square feet.