What spiffy features would you put in a house?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Inspired by the Strange features in houses thread, I posit to the Dopers the following: you are going to build yourself a house! You have a lot all ready and everything, and you’re deciding what to put in your house. You are not, however, filthy rich; you are building a nice middle-class house, not a mansion. So, no fully automated electronic house-brains that anticipate your every whim. But, within reasonable limits, what neat things would you put in your house?

Do the kids get a secret hideout? Are there window seats and bookshelves built in every room? Are the kitchen counters made of Teflon or possibly Kevlar? Is there a throne toilet in the basement?

2

If I ever build a house, it will definitely have a secret passageway. Preferably accessible through a swinging bookcase. I don’t know where it’s going to lead just yet. Probably a secret room where I can go when I just want to be alone!

3

Indoor plumbing and electricity.

Really!

I cannot understand why so many builders places plumbing lines inside of exterior walls. Even with what appears to be adequate insulation, the danger of freezing pipes doesn’t cut it with me. Even with the kitchen sink/counter along an outside wall (with window) it is relatively simple to have the plumbing come up through the floor inside the house and not the exterior wall.

For electricity I would consider some low-voltage wiring as well as the 110v lines. While I’m at it, Cat 5 all around as well.

4

My wife thinks I am kidding when I tell her I want to build a conveyor belt that runs from the driveway to the kitchen for unloading groceries.

Also, I like things that were commonplace in th epast, but for some reason have been left behind. I give you the laundry chute! The dumb waiter! The razor blade disposal slot in the bathroom! All still relevant, but sadly, not often seen in new houses.

5

I’d put the bloody laundry room on the same floor as the bedrooms. I have no clue why builders have yet to figure out that laundry = dirty clothes. Clothes are stored in the bedroom closet in most homes. Why the @#$@# they make us trundle them from the upstairs bedrooms to the main floor laundry, or, even worse, a basement laundry is beyond me.

6

I have always had this idea of building a house based on the idea of quiet. Like all of the doors, windows and the like would open and close silently and all of the walls would be thick enough that you could, say, watch TV at whatever volume you wanted in one room and someone could sleep in the other. Kind of dull, I guess.

Also, I would set the kitchen up more along the lines of an industrial kitchen. Especially the sink area where I would have a pressure sprayer and one of those dishwashers that you slid a rack in to and pulled down the door.

7

Stately Mercotan manor already has several features I love. Laundry chute from my bathroom, passthrough for groceries so you can just lift them up to the kitchen level from the garage instead of carrying them all the way around and up the stairs, and these great automatic shutters on nearly all the windows. The only problem with the shutters is their tendency to collect giant colonies of flies on the undersides in the winter (ew!) and the fact that it took me a year to start being able to sleep easily without a totally dark room.

8

I’d put the garage right in the middle of the circular driveway with garage doors on either side. I’ve grown tired of backing up over the kids. From now on just open the other door and drive right on through.

9

Because the TV is downstairs in the living room. The inconvinience of carring the clothes downstairs pales in comparison to the inconvinience of having to go back upstairs to change loads. As this is a matter of personal preference, I’ve seen it both ways in houses, although the downstairs laundries tend to outnumber the upstairs ones.

Now personally, I’d take a laundry chute, so I can just dump the dirty clothes down a hole and have them land in the laundry room.

-lv

10

Laundry wise:

Laundry tub (very useful for messy children and objects)
Washer/dryer on the second floor or a dumb waiter and/or laundry chute
A large linen closet with shelves
Front-loading washer and dryer high enough I don’t have to bend

Master bath wise:

Large multi-person tub
Shower with safety bars (large enough for multiple people)
Instant hot water

Kitchen wise:

Holes in the countertop for garbage and recyclables (just slide the filled containers out).
Oven at non-bending height
Broiler
Gas and electric cooking
Silent multi-rack (configurable as needed per load, like a fridge with movable shelves) dishwasher
Instant hot water

Living room wise:

Built in bookcases and large windows
Baby Grand Piano
Built in window seats

Family room wise:

Built in TV holder (entertainment center) that can close up and look like cabinetry when not in use.
Game tables that configure to different games
Regulation Pool Table and mini bar

Master Bedroom wise:

Bookcases built in and above the back of the bed
Recessed lighting
A phone that flashes instead of rings
Skylight

Garage wise:

Rotating storage racks, that act like a Ferris Wheel. You put your stuff on a shelf/in a bin, and it rotates up out of the way, you use a keypad to pull it down when you need it.

Overall house wise:

Optional drainage. I’d love to have my shower water, Laundry water, etc, optionally drain to a private greywater well for re-use on the lawn. (I’d stick to organic shamppos and soaps). You know, flip a switch and it drains to the common sewers or not.

Solar heating, electricity, wind electricty

Large trees to provide natural shade and cooling for the house.

A breakfast room with a glassed in roof that can be cranked back to let the fresh air and sunshine in (my aunt has a room like this).

A cat door that doesn’t look like one (and only works for our cats via their ID microchip).

11

I’d have to have:

Higher countertops. I get such back aches when I do dishes because counters are made for people shorter than I am.

Along the same vein, a big bathtub. Big enough that I could just sink into and soak in, and the showerhead must be raised about 5 inches. I am tired of ducking down to rinse my hair.

I really need a porch with a porch swing that is nice and comfy (my Nanna’s porch swing is exactly what I want)

My bedroom will have built in bookshelves and a window seat. There must also be built in shelves/entertainment centre in the family room. Probably a window seat there too.

Those are my must haves, anything else is pure gravy.

12

First, the house would be built with easy access to all plumbing and wiring

A small walk-in refrigerator. It would have a regular refrigerator type door on the kitchen side, but a walk-in door from behind.

Light sensitive retractible sunscreens. (These are available, but pricey)

Taller countertop and sink on my side of the bathroom vanity. (This shall come to pass when I remodel the bathroom)

My closet is deep enough to have two clothes poles. If a second clothes pole were installed it would have to be half as wide as the closet and be and be able to slide from one side of the closet to the other so you could get to the one behind it. This idea may also be implemented.

Low voltage lighting system throughout the house.

A snail shower with multiple, adjustable, shower heads.

A service pit in the garage floor

13

  1. Built-in bookcases just about everywhere.

  2. Utility-closet area that can accomodate a good sized cat box.

  3. Sound-proofing in my music studio.

  4. Ethernet jacks in every room.

  5. A real kitchen pantry.

  6. The floors done right and the way I want them before I move in. None of this, “I’ll settle for the default carpet for now and install wood floors later, after I’ve accumulated heavy furniture, exhausted my storage space, and have no free time”.

14

-Heated driveways and walkways.

-Rainwater runoff collection from house and garage.

-Skylights

-Solar panels and windmills - for generating electricity.

15

Unsafe windows. The full-size kind that swing open like a door. There’s nothing better than opening your bedroom window wide open in the chilly morning and leaning out to survey the day. A standard double-hung just doesn’t work for this, and neither does a cranked unit.

I wonder why you don’t see these more?

16

One thing I saw a while back that I thought was kinda neat was an accessory for a central vacuum system, specifically made for the kitchen (although it’d work just about anywhere you have a smooth-surface floor). It was kind of an oblong open space, with a kick-on/kick-off rocker switch, that was installed below the bottom kitchen cabinets. When you swept the kitchen, you swept toward the thing, kicked on the switch, swept everything into the opening, then kicked the vacuum off again. Clean floor, with no dustpan and no bending over. Neat!

And of course, a garage with a drain. awwww yeah.

17

We just moved into our new house a month ago. Here’s the cool stuff we added/changed from the builder’s specs:

Laundry room upstairs.
2 utility sinks - one in laundry, one in basement
cat 5 & cable to every room
prewire family room for home theater speakers.
Handheld shower head on hose in addition to normal showerhead. These are great for giving small children a bath - much easier to wash their hair with this.
Several exterior outlets.
central vacuum system.

18

I want a stone floor for our entire home with a drain in the middle of each room, like a Turn of the Century mental hospital.

And a hose.

19

A full fledged darkroom, with rotating light-tight door and high end film processing equipment

a shower and toilet in the main bedroom, one of my freinds lives in an old cemetary house and the second floor bedroom has a shower stall, sink, and toilet right in the same room (maybe i could do away with the toilet, but having a shower stall right in the bedroom is just plain cool)

heated gararge with a full rack of tools (and a drain in the floor :wink: )

built-in ethernet networking, built in AirPort Extreme bubble covering the entire house

Sunroom, in a Japanese garden style

light-tight blinds so i can sleep late and not get disturbed by the sun, also makes it impossible for would-be thieves to look in the windows to see if i have any stuff worth stealing

a security system that freezes any would-be intruders or thieves in carbonite (they’ll double as nice lawn ornaments as well :wink: )

20

one last thing, my home theatre system would be built up around the bed, i could lie down on my huge bed and watch a movie in full Dolby Digital 6.1/DTS-ES glory, on my choice of Plasma HDTV (one at the at the foot of the bed, one bolted to the ceiling)

aside from the plasma screen(s), i actually have this one set up, my home theatre (DD 5.1/DTS) setup has the TV facing the foot of the bed, and the speakers all aim to the bed, there’s nothing better than watching a DVD on my high end home theatre from the comfort of my Full-size bed