What would you have in your fantasy mansion?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
61

Of course! But we’re discussing what we would have in our house. Out at the airport, I’d have my Boeing Business Jet (with the extended range option). I find Gulfstreams too tiny and cramped, and unsuitable for a gazillionaire like myself.

Nonsense! Winter is a beautiful time of year. And without winter, we would not have the renaissance of spring, or the colours of autumn, with that fresh nip in the air that would give me an excuse to light the many cozy fireplaces in Chateau Wolfpup.

And if it’s winter and I feel like going for a swim or just lounging on the patio with a summer drink, that’s why I have my Convertible Patio with the retractable roof previously described. This has all been well thought out! :wink:

Of course, at some point in a long winter one may wish for a change of scene. That’s when I hop in my faithful BBJ (see above) and fly down to my other place on the Riviera, where my yacht awaits on the Mediterranean shores.

62

Library first of all. A heated swimming pool. When I was in Japan I ate several times in a restaurant called Aquarium (yes its sign outside was in English). Throughout the restaurant (there were a couple of rooms) snaked an aquarium. It consisted of a tube with square cross-section, at least a yard square running up the wall of one room, continuing on the wall between the two rooms, then the wall of the second room and back. It must have been at least 100 feet in total length. It had fish swimming in throughout. I do not know if what I was eating had recently been swimming by me. I want one of them. Also a large greenhouse. A heliport with helicopter and pilot for local errands and a runway with jet and pilot.

63

In no particular order (but required):

  • A couple of “Master Bedroom” suites with double-secret ensuite attached Master-size bathrooms and walk in dressing rooms.
  • A decent size movie theater
  • Laboratory space for the transmogrification machine
  • Walk-in storage locker for the jet packs
  • Four-bay, double-deep garage: two bays for cars, and two for workout space
  • Side cabin for the ham radio shack
  • Secure, armored room for lightsaber storage
  • Huge office, with many leatherbound books, and webcam capability and multiple plasma monitors, all of which smell of rich mahogany
  • Kickass deck overlooking the grounds
  • An “Astronomy Room” complete with Stellar Cartography projection system. . . because why the hell not?
  • Double-sized kitchen with one of those rolling garage door windows

Tripler
I have to work out to look all Muscular Evil Madman for my World Global Domination Zoom meetings.

64

A 3/8th mile paved short track and a huge shop full of oval track race cars.
A distillery along with an assortment of rickhouses throughout my state. At the ocean, on the sound, in the mountains, in the desert, on the Columbia River.
A warehouse with at least one bottle of each American whiskey produced by American distilleries, large and small. I maintain a list of all of these, that would be a minimum of 3,628 bottles of bourbon, rye, and other whiskey’s made from grain. I would never have to drink from the same bottle twice unless I wanted to.
A gym with the latest equipment and a swimming pool so I could get my fat ass in shape. And a personal chef to help with my diet.

65

A library, of course, well stocked and with the books well ordered.
An enormous saltwater aquarium, something like that in Berlin Alexanderplatz but the other way around: not in the middle of the room but along the walls.
A kitchen. Not any ol’ kitchen: THE kitchen, with ingredients no end (including a profusion of champagne, beer and whisky) and appliances like the adds were true.
An astronomical observatory. Or a direct link to the Hubble and its successors, with full command and live transmission to a biiiig screen. Let the experts select what to see and have them explain it to me.
Four greenhouses, each set with temperature and light conditions to a different season, so that I could hand pick selected fruit just riped to perfection every day: Figs from Spanish and French trees, green and violet, Mangoes from Indonesian and Indian trees, four or five varieties of artichockes, italian tomatoes (the soil would be imported from the slopes of the Vesuv, of course) all kind of berries, cherries, etc. Just a beginning to give you a general idea. Also various hallucinogenic plants and mushrooms, poppies and cannabis. And some plants just for esthetic reasons, with flowers and leafs like only evolution can come up with. And a gardener to do the chores.
A pond with amphibians. Not too close, they are loud, and well protected from that fungus that is killing them and from predators. So that makes probably the fifth greenhouse.
A sixth greenhouse for ferns.
A big room with an open fire, with a slow swinging silken hammock suspended diagonally across the whole room.
Art on every wall. And a painting and drawing studio.
A hangar for my zeppelin.
A swimming pool. Would not have to be very broad, but very long. Part inside, part outside, heated if necessary; the outside part finishing as an infinity pool with a nice view of the ocean on one side and mountains on the other.
A couple of cats.
A meditation/yoga room for my wife. Ups! We already have that! (Well she took one room and declared it hers, and she does yoga and meditates there, so yes, that is what it is).
A music and TV room, although “TV” does not do justice to what I picture. Imagine something resembling a small movie theater with the possibility of selecting what you see (movies, sport retransmissions, Netflix…) with no delay, interruptions or ads. Same for the music, in high quality.
A room full of time. Spare time, just for me, to daydream.

66

Just the basics: Huge kitchen connected to the dining room by a butler’s pantry; an equally large pantry; large wine cellar; armoury; indoor and outdoor shooting ranges; hidden rooms and secret passages; raised flowerbeds full of tulips and daffodils; en suite loos, walk-in closets and dressing rooms for all bedrooms; a special room for the cats; a room for the model railroad; plenty of staff (maids, chefs, groundskeepers, &c); a tower; and a much less rococo version of this:

(complete with bat colony to take care of book-damaging insects).



That, as I said, is just the basics. I’d also want a submarine control room trainer:

67

The cats I know don’t want their own room, they want to be in the same room as their person until they decide it’s time to sleep. Then they sleep wherever they are. It only has to be warm.
But cats in plural is correct. :smiley_cat: :smile_cat:
Wonder how the cats and the bat colony get along…

69

Not at Chateau Wolfpup, where it’s wrong even in the singular … I intend to have signs:

70

Yeah, I figured our avatars would not get along well. Pity!

71

Oh, I nearly forgot, I also need to have a zero gravity room in my house.

What do you mean not possible on earth?!!! I have very smart people I pay lots of money to figure that sort of thing out. Now get on with it, before I get impatient and push the red button causing the doormat/trapdoor to retract and cause the fool standing on it to fall down the chute to the, um, unwelcome visitor chamber. I haven’t quite worked out what that will entail just yet.

72

Wood workshop.
Clean workshop.
Music rehearsal/recording studio.
Snooker room.
Large conservatory (for holding small jazz gigs in).

73

In a fun sort of circularity, the chute you’re talking about is in fact exactly how to build a zero gravity room here on Earth. Just make it real tall, jump from the top, and land on something soft at the bottom. Or use your parachute. You did remember to bring along your parachute I hope? :wink:

74

All one level - at least, master suite on main level. An elevator, if it’s two (or more) stories.

Backyard pool - like the sort you see them building on TV shows, not a rectangular lap pool. Heated, so we can use it during spring and fall. I like the idea of an indoor/outdoor scenario but I hate the chlorine-y smell of indoor pools - maybe a saltwater one would do?

Bigger kitchen with two dishwashers. A large walk-in pantry with 3 times the space of the one we have now (normal “two-door closet” size). Not that we’d necessarily need 3 times the food - but twice the food, with enough space to SEE everything…

Garage(s) with enough room to park the car AND walk around the cars - the standard 20 x 20 foot garages these days don’t have enough room to store extras like bikes, lawnmowers etc. and we can’t get from one car to the other without opening the big garage door. At least 3 cars worth.

Heated driveway and sidewalks, to make snow shovelling easy (or not required).

Solar panels so we can be off-grid for electricity.

Bathrooms: roll-in showers in case we ever need that. Walk-in bathtubs, ditto (I love the huge tub in our master bath but it’s a pain to haul my fat carcass to my feet after a long soak). Grab bars to assist with that. Whirlpool tub. Bidet toilet with unlimited warm water (the seat attachment we have now is nice, but the warm water only lasts a minute or two).

A library would be great. 30+ years ago, there was a house built “on spec” in a town we used to live in. It had a 17x17 foot mahogany-shelved library - supposedly the single most expensive room in the place. The price for the place was exorbitant (by our standards, then; our house now in a more expensive area would sell for about as much as that place 30 years ago). We got rid of many of our dead-tree books when we moved here 18 years ago, and I mostly read on my Kindle (thanks to aging eyes) but there’s nothing like being able to pick up a book at random and start browsing.

A view of some large body of water - ocean, river - with access to same. A couple years ago we stayed on Ile d’Orleans for a few days and there was a riverfront lot for sale nearby. It was really tempting, except for our lack of a) funds, and b) time to spend there.

75

Guggenheim it .

My fantasy mansion would look like a castle, and be defensible against a pre-gunpowder army.

Lots of stained-glass windows.

A library, with all of the Great Literary Classics, and all of my personal favorites, all printed on acid-free paper, with leather bindings and gilt-edged pages. I would have the works of my favorite authors printed in Gothic letters on vellum, and illuminated like medieval manuscripts. Adjacent to the library would be a small dungeon-themed room for D&D games.

Two theaters. One with a flat screen, and one with a curved screen for Omnimax movies.

A good sound system. Not enough to impress the hardcore audiophiles, but enough to provide a pleasant experience for people who are actually interested in the music.

A small movie studio. I would probably be a latter-day Ed Wood, but I would have the tools to be a Truffaut.

A grand ballroom/banquet hall, with marble floor, mirrored walls, baroque ceiling, and corundum chandeliers. Which I would probably never use, but my grandchildren could rent out for weddings and bar mitzvahs.

A small shrine, reminiscent of the Lincoln Memorial or the Jefferson Memorial, with a larger-than-life statue of me at the center. When entertaining visitors, I would hire actors to wear priest-like robes and chant Latin songs praising me.

76

(Smacks head): almost forgot the chemistry lab and the golf course!

77

My mansion will need to be in the middle of nowhere. I would like the following:

On-site planetarium
Bowling alley
The 48" Aga range in blueberry
Shooting range
Greenhouse/vegetable garden
English garden out back and xeriscaping in the front
Fireplaces in every room except the bathroom; that seems excessive
A giant garage for the cars that the husband and grandson will collect
Panic room/tornado shelter

As soon as I hit reply, I will think of more.

78

A dedicated, huge, library.
A brand new kitchen.

79

A few basics:

  • Dedicated office room (computer desk, writing desk, work table, several file/storage cabinets)
  • Dedicated home theater room
  • Master suite with big closet(s) and master bath with shower and jacuzzi tub
  • A couple of guest rooms, including one or two (less opulent) master suites
  • Great room sufficient for hosting a few dozen people comfortably
  • Kitchen (nothing particularly fancy, but full-sized with the usual equipment), dining room, and pantry (big enough that the group can argue whether it counts as a large closet or a small room)
  • 3+ car garage (meaning mostly one car and two cars’ worth of work space)
  • A couple of extra half-baths, arranged to have out-of-the-way spots to park a litter box or two in each
  • All the features on one floor, but with semi-finished basement and attic for overflow storage and maintenance access
80

A library. (That’s a Doper pre-req, I think)

A nice (though not huge) barn with a large climate-controlled indoor arena.

A special gizmo that washes the dogs’ feet as they come through the dog door.

I’d like a house with an inner courtyard/garden, where rooms open up to the garden area. And a gardener, because I love gardens but hate to garden.

Secret passages, natch.

A second home on the water somewhere. This isn’t something I want all the time, so the house can be small and cozy.

StG

81

Can’t the dogs just moisten their feet crossing the moat?