What features would be "must-haves" in the house of your dreams?

In My Humble Opinion
61

Practical, pragmatic, sensible things to look for in a home:

lots of windows/ lots of light. Also, something to look AT out those windows.

I prefer brick, but don’t live in one.

Fireplace or wood stove–nice feature, no matter where you live (except maybe Hawaii)

graded yard with some natural plantings (that is “native plants”) but enough of a green grass patch that one can play catch on it. Look for yards that have some cohesion with the house.

Fairly recent furnace, A/C, hot water heater etc. Circuit breaker, not a fuse box.

I prefer hardwood floors to wall to wall carpeting. Look for “good bones” in a house–how high are the ceilings? What is the room flow like? Can you have privacy in the living room or is it more of a great room concept?

Things I’d like in my Fantasy Home:

library with one of those ladder thingies on wheels that can skate across a track facing the books. And a huge globe.

Balcony somewhere inside the house that overlooks somewhere else–maybe some kind of landing?

LARGE rooms. But not too large. Window seats with storage would be great.

In the wall vacuum system (I grew up with this–wonderful). WiFi for the whole house, and wire the stereo (I suppose all this happens on a computer now, but I’m old. Bear with me) so that there are speakers that you can turn on and off in every room.

Sunporch or protected porch for outdoor living.

Water feature–pond, rill or similar in backyard, with decent landscaping so that it looks natural. Ditto deck.

wainscotting, molding, panelling, coved ceilings, archways.

Appliances that work with the wherewithall to fix them.

There’s more, but I can’t think of it right now.

62

My dream house is a mixture of these two:

I could go on all day about my dream house. I’ve even drawn a plan of what it would look like.

But to keep in line with this:

I’ll say that I’d love to have a decent-sized garden - space for growing food as well as playing - large sash windows like the ones we have now, a big dishwasher, an American-style fridge, a chest freezer as well as a normal upright freezer, lots and lots of bookshelves (I do have a fair few), a big, chunky kitchen table, a couple of really enormous saucepans, a double oven and hob, and a really strong power shower.

63

Comments on a Home Theater: I would not have a “theater style” home theater with rows of seats and other typical features. I’d like a big-ass screen, but the room would be filled with couches and recliners. Each seat would have a remote and that remote would have a small blinking light. This light would be activated when someone had to go to the bathroom or get more popcorn. It would blink until a scene break, and would remain on “freeze screen” for 5 minutes while people did whatever it was they needed to do. If it takes longer than that, tough shit…we’re starting again without you.

64

Pleasant things:

Courtyard garden.

Wraparound porch or covered deck.

Large library/study.

Laid-back media/play room.

Very large back yard; heck, make it the size of a football field.

Hurricane/earthquake/common criminal-proof saferoom/bunker, size and equipment of a small apartment, with supplies for a month. Just in case, y’know…

Practical things, or what I long for after some of the houses I lived in:

Excellent drainage in the lot. Preferrably in a direction away from my foundations.

Layout of plumbing, electrical, telephone and network installations such that they can be accessed and serviced without significantly destroying walls and floors.

While at that, twice as many electrical sockets(independently breakered per room) as are required by code. Heck, make it triple.

Cistern, and water purification/distillation plant. Solar water heater, photovoltaic panels.
Utter fantasy:

Hef hands over the Mansion fully turnkey, including all the… um… “boarders” :smiley:

65

Central Air
Tub big enough to soak in.
Room big enough to have regulation pool table
Dishwasher
Garage
Garage door opener.
Hot woman to share it with…

66

Mud room, no need to open the main house directly to the outdoors.
In-Floor heating and High vellocity A/C. Try to get them as efficient as possible.
Multi-fuel boiler with solar panels.
Diesel powered back-up generator.
Stainless Steel bathroom. Ever seen a jail cell? Like that but nicer.
One level, to old for stairs
Very large autoshop. Former Dealer tech. Need space for lift.
Good sized eat-in kitchen. Lots of counter space. Gas range and oven.

I will be saving all ideas in this thread

67

Solar panels - enough so that my power bill is under 10 bucks a month.

BIG kitchen with tons of storage and counter space. And well laid out - when we’re clearing the table / putting away leftovers, we’re pushing past each other.

Master bath with separate tub / shower (we have this presently and though we don’t soak all that often, it’s NICE to not have to worry about scrubbing the tub before soaking). Not necessarily a jacuzzi, I don’t know that I’d use that all that often.

HUGE walk-in closet - with enough for two people’s stuff.

Separate sink ‘n’ stuff area from the toilet - I’ve seen bathrooms where the toilet is in its own cubicle. It’s a pain when one of us has to potty, but has to either wait for someone doing toothbrushing etc., or run out of the master suite to another bathroom.

Oversized garage - ours barely fits the 2 cars. We know people who only use their garage for 1 car and put assorted crap in the other half.

Additional parking that doesn’t block the garage exit.

Land that has water (lake or stream or river) on or bordering it.

Lots of trees on the property. Lots of windows in the house.

A mudroom with broom closet. No new houses these days have any place to store the brooms or vacuum cleaners, for cryin’ out loud. And a place where the kids can dump their boots as they come in the house would be WONDERFUL.

All 1 level - my knees are starting to grumble at the stairs.

Larger bedrooms. Our master bedroom is OK but the kids’ bedrooms are a bit on the small side.

68

The house of my dreams will most likely be a small concrete block psuedo castle.

Solid unpainted walls, and something like corrugated galvanized roofing.

No painting, no shingles, can be placed in remote areas without fear of wildfire due to being very non flammable on exterior surfaces. All windows would all have heavy steel shutters that can be shut and locked from inside.

It would most likely consist of a 100’x100’ square exterior wall with 20’x20’ square corner towers. Two stories high, the outer walls would be at least 18-20’.

There would be a roughly 40’x40’ center courtyard with a nice outdoor patio/dining area and fixed BBQ setup. the 30’ from the outer walls to the couryard would be a ring of rooms around the courtyard with a common hallway that rings the courtyard.

Commercial grade kitchen, lots of pantry space, walk in refrigerator and freezers. Enough room that you could stock up and go shopping maybe once a month except for some fresh veggies/milk. Depending on area you might be able to get those delivered.

OF course it would be located on 20-30 acres of wildland and very medieval themed and turned into a giant light roleplay medival themed B&B.

69

Japanese call it the very original “basu” which is how they pronounce the word “bath.” (No “th” in Japanese." Traditionally it was called an “o-furo,” but Japanese don’t traditionally have showers and Western words are sexier.

Living in Tokyo in a tiny place, my list of “must-have” features is as follows:

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70

Be careful, you have seen those free credit report dot com commericals havent you?:slight_smile:

71

A really rockin’ kitchen
2 media rooms - both with kick ass stereos and huge TV’s (one for me and one for my husband)
A huge garage for my husband
A separate wing for my son for when he visits complete with his own kitchen and stuff
A huge fenced in area where my dog can play.
A bowling alley. I’ve always wanted a bowling alley.

72

When we were building our house I wanted to have installed two dishwashers.

One for clean dishes.

One for dirty dishes.

The look I got from my husband and a few of the free roaming contractor’s told me I was nuttier than squirrel poo.
Then I wanted to do a wind mill, a smaller one, to capture the power of the wind that is always present on our little hill. Always present. It would have set us back about $10k at the time and would have provided extra electricity during outages ( which at the time were quite frequent.)

The look I got from my husband told me that I am insane.
Really, other than a jacuzzi tub, I just want my two dishwashers and windmill thingie. Oh, and solar panels.

(and an indoor outdoor solar powered, geo thermal swimming pool that is 15 ft deep. No shallow end. No pussies allowed. No neck injuries.)

73

This is weird, but for some reason I like being able to see another part of my house by looking out a window. My current house has a sort of zig-zaggy floor plan and several bay windows, so that seems to fit the bill.

I also like a basement and a garage. I like the basement because it lets you access the underside of the house without crawling through a dank snake, spider, and mouse infested space. I like a garage because I seem to collect vehicles and like a nice sheltered place to store and work on them.

I like wood floors rather than carpet, I got tired of carpet.

For the outside I prefer brick, and a slate roof would be ideal.

74

How would you feel about having a second husband? :cool:

75

A lot of great ideas here; I’ll have to steal some.

One thing I haven’t seen that I’ve always wanted: a fireplace in my bedroom.

76

We built our house about 15 years ago, and it works pretty well for us. There are a few things that I would like to change, mostly adding space to some of the rooms, but the one thing that I really yearn for is a sitting area in the master bedroom. As it is, the room is a decent size for the bed and a couple of dressers, but I would love to have enough additional space for a big cushy chair, a small table, and a lamp. That way I could shut my door and curl up with a book where no one could bother me.

77

A garage. (I hate to see the damage winter does to my car every year)

A big bathtub. (I grew up taking baths, and I miss the relaxation of them)

Good laundry facilities (I’m one of those weird people who -likes- to do laundry)

A spectacular view (There are days I like to just sit and look out the window. Again, very relaxing if you’ve got the view for it. Right now I have my choice of: Wooden fence, grassy area with wooden fence, or brick wall. Not inspiring except when there are bunnies in the grassy areas.)

Oh! Oh, upon edit: Single floor, metal rain gutters. Don’t ask me why, but hearing rain on the roof makes me feel really happy and at-ease. I remember drifting off to sleep with the sound of rain on the windows and roof when I was a child, and severely miss that sound as an adult.

78

My dream home:

doesn’t have a mortgage
has never been remodeled at any point by a DIYer without a clue
has no part of it on slab foundation
has enough rooms that husband has his room for his stuff and I have room for my stuff
we have enough bedrooms for the family (that are all larger than modern construction standard of 8x10 for kids rooms)

and it has a good sized kitchen that’s not in the center of the house and radiant floor heating throughout. (I’m tired of cold feet. )

about all I’ve got now is the nice sized kitchen and a room for husband’s stuff.

79

Insulation and weatherproofing.

Lots and lots of warm fuzzy insulation. Behind every wall. Up in the attic. Cozy pinkness or fluffiness in every nook and cranny.

And nice, totally up-to-date, weather-sealed windows with that special nifty coating that blocks heat flow.

Oh, and a furnace with the blower power to heat the necessary cube-footage.

Historic code, my ass. I love sweaters, but one shouldn’t have to layer them inside the house. Next winter I may have to get one of those blankets with sleeves.

80

When we were house shopping a couple of years ago, there was a desecrated (in the sense of ‘no longer consecrated’ rather than ‘vandalized’.) church that was on the market, in West End Toronto, near the High Park - Annette neighbourhood. It was way more than we could afford, but we were crunching numbers this way and that trying to figure out if there were any way to make it work. The thing we wanted to do was to live in what had been the offices and classrooms of the church, while keeping the choir loft and sanctuary, using it as a rehearsal/recording studio by day, and as a venue at night. (3 nights a week classical, 3 nights a week jazz, Mondays dark.) Take the pews out - staggered seating for the classical folks, tables of 6 - 12 for the jazzers. No liquor license, just coffee and soda.

No matter how we looked at it, we were stretched too thin, and the least little thing going wrong would cost us everything we owned. But for a couple of days, it was fine to dream about it… Some developer got it, and turned it into condos, which is probably what would have happened to it after we lost our shirts over it.

Coulda put a squash court in the basement, too…