Dream house

With a little prompting from Suthana, I spent some time at work today speculating about what my Dream House would be like. The plans are still a little rough, but here's what I've got so far.

First of all, this is assuming I live alone (any pets not included). It'd be a fairly small house. Two stories, but each story would be fairly small. I'm thinking it'll be built of stones and logs. Probably front and back would be logs and the sides would be stone. I'm actually not sure if you can do that or not, though, so that part is subject to change.

For the purposes of this description, we'll assume the front door is facing south, okiedokie? The ground floor would have three rooms. Well, kind of four, but the living room and kitchen would be sort of open to each other. When you walk in the front door (middle of the south wall), there would be a flight of stairs in front of you. To the left would be the living room, to the right would be the kitchen. In the back of the house would be the bedroom and bathroom. Washer and dryer would be set in a kind of alcove under the stairs. Alcove, closet, whatever you want to call it. Basically, there'd be a short, thin hallway between the back of the stairs and the wall that blocks off the bedroom and bathroom, and that's where the washing machine and dryer would be. The floor would be either wood or stone, same as the walls. I'd probably have a rug in the living room, but not carpet. I don't much like carpet. Naturally, there'd be a piano, too. An upright. Grands take up too much space and don't sound THAT much better.

Now here's the real kicker. In the middle-ish of the west wall (living room, remember?), there would be a fireplace. To the left of the fireplace, there would be a climbing wall built into the rock. It would go up and then over so you're climbing up over the fireplace, then through the floor of the second story and all the way up till you're up near the roof. About three or four feet below the ceiling of the house (the roof would be peaked too, so this would be pretty much the highest point of the house), there would be a ledge about two to three feet wide, forming a little cubby. Right over the fireplace. Several feet below, the chimney would split apart so the smoke goes around the cubby. I figure (though again, I haven't worked out whether it would work right) that would make it so the cubby is warm whenever there's a fire going. If possible, I'd put a window in the cubby too, making it a window seat.

The upstairs would be one room. There'd be a banister... fence...? kind of thing around the edge of the stairs, and another around the hole in the floor for the climbing wall. To the left of the hole for the climbing wall would be a computer desk, and to the right would be another desk, this one for reading, writing, studying, and otherwise spreading out books. The rest of the room would be devoted to bookshelves, except for a corner with a squashy couch and a few pillows and one of those really bright floor lamps.

Hmmm, while we're dreaming, let's make the upstairs a little bit smaller to make a little balcony on the north wall. On the balcony would be a rock garden. And the east wall would have another window seat, this one bigger, because most of that wall (upstairs) would be made of glass. Basically, upstairs would be devoted to reading, working, and looking out of windows to survey my vast terrain. It will be green. And set far enough away from the road that traffic noise is virtually nonexistent.

Sue says I should put a pool table upstairs. I guess that could work. I probably wouldn't have enough books to fill the entire upstairs, given that it would be almost the size of the entire downstairs. The problem is, playing pool in a room with a wall made largely of glass is never a wise idea. Especially given my style of play: Hit the cue ball as hard as you can and hope the right ball goes in. (That's a lie, but it sounded funny.) But I do enjoy playing pool. I can't deny that. Okay, nix the second window seat and the glass wall. A few windows, yes. Glass wall, no.

I was also toying with the idea of a really big telescope upstairs. The huge kind that goes through the ceiling and you have to use motorized controls to turn it. Since I'm daydreaming here, sure, let's throw that in too.

And as long as we're daydreaming.... In Disney World, there's a sidewalk with fiberoptic lights set into a stone sidewalk. At night, the fiberoptic lights turn on and it looks like you're walking on stars. That. Is. Awesome. Haven't decided yet whether that would be in the floors or the walls or the ceiling, but since we're dreaming here... I want! Haven't thought much about the rest of the lighting, but other than the floor lamp upstairs, the lights would definitely be set in the walls or ceiling somehow. I'm not a huge fan of lamps. Waste of space.

Oooo, know what else would be cool? Remember the balcony upstairs? Okay, well, there would be a big slide going down from there straight into the garage. I'm thinking the garage would be on the east side of the house, so the slide would have to curl around a bit, but I'm sure that could be managed.

Other than that and the fact that I will use a pair of crossed samurai swords as a decoration somewhere, I didn't think of anything else. There's not much storage space, and the floor plan isn't anything especially imaginative. I guess it's just fun to dream. I may come up with an idea for another house shaped more like a child's playground sometime... but not right now.

Toodles!