Frozenguy's thread on customizing a house got me thinking... What if i had unlimited money and space and location wasn't so important... What kind of house would i have...? My house would be EXTREMELY personalized... i don't know much about furniture or interior decorating, but i know what i like... i would DEFINITELY have secret doors and hall passages throughout the house - even a secret basement...! My secret basement, of course, would have to be below my full court, very high ceilinged, complete with bleachers, indoor, sub-level basketball court - gotta have one of those... Privacy is a big thing for me, so no HUGE windows right smack dab in the middle of the front of house without curtains, unless, of course, they're so tinted you can't see through them at point blank range with the center of the sun as your flashlight... Or they can be mirrored, whatever, i'm not picky... Security is also a reasonable and highly-prioritized concern... Gotta have all the latest cameras and CCTVs and alarms and gizmos and whatzitcalleds and stuff... The pool would have to be very similar to the grotto at Hefner's place... Gotta have something HUGE with all sorts of dips and tunnels and little romantic nooks and silliness like that... It's got to be something guests will just die to be in... The entire thing will have to be heated, too... Then there are the rooms of the house... Each room will be themed... For instance, there will be a room in which i will draw... There will be a drafting table in there, all sorts of art supplies and whatever makes me feel most comfortable when i'm (trying to) draw... No ordinary-colored paint or wallpaper on the walls, either... "Themed" means the walls, floor and ceiling will be custom... Maybe one entire wall will have The Vitruvian Man painted on it, exactly as the original looks... Since i'm a Dali and Escher fan, the other walls would have recreations of their works - or better yet, for Escher, maybe the entire floor would be a replica of one of his pieces - that would be cool... There are so many possibilities to consider, but you get the point... Then i would have another room where i would write... This room would be a little more conservative in design... For instance, i'll need a desk with the latest electronic, wired and/or wireless hook-ups, the highest speed internet connections, the coolest, sickest, most awesomist lap top ever... Close by will have to be reference materials... Dictionaries, thesauri, encyclopediae - the works... One wall, i envision, will have a HUGE mural of the cover of those composition books we all used in school - you know, the black and white ones with the silly, scribbly, splattered black and white design all over them... Another wall will have HUGE painted "pieces" of paper... Maybe another wall would be brick and the other would be something else, i'm not sure... This room MUST have a television and a primo CD player/radio/audio system or the point of the room will be completely useless if it makes me feel sealed off from the rest of the world when i'm trying to write... This room must also have a 'fridge - or at least a Coke machine... i also need a studio... A whole, complete, state of the art, ALL of the equipment i could possibly need (but don't know how to use) recording studio... Function would prevail in the design of this room, but a few tasteful pictures of some music legends certainly wouldn't hurt... There will be Ferrari stuff ALL around the entire house, but there will be a special Ferrari "room"... A shrine to end all shrines - it would undoubtedly be one of the biggest rooms in the house... The garage would also be obsessive beyond compulsive... Now that i think about each room the more i write, the more i realize i could expound more and more on each room with all sorts of stuff - i could literally sit here and write about this for hours... But that would bore everyone except me... So what would your custom houses have...?
I wouldn't care much for the house on the ground, just something that's nice and can entertain guests. I would rather have a lake front house than ocean, I'm not much a fan of salt water. Below ground is where I'd probably spend most of my time in an underground garage. Ultgar (member here on Fchat, short for Ultimate Garage) is currently working on an underground garage (~30 spots) with a full size bball court. I would probably have the same thing except with multiple bays for detailing and working like Ultgar's other custom garage.
I would definetly live it up, its the teenager within. The garage would be a shade bigger then the mediurm warehouse, assuming I had the cars to fill it, my one car doesnt need that much room
I would like to have a full size replica of Spa and a fleet of various F1 cars...my parties would ROCK.
The last time i was in Denver i saw what would be in my mind the ultimate house.... The control tower at the former Stapleton Airport. Just think a sun deck 200' above your nosey neighbors
Well here's a deal for you. You can have, the vintage Helena Montana airport building and control tower almost for free. All you have to do is move it.
This is about right.. just subtract the oil equipment and add a stainless steel Frank Gehry designed home on top. Elevated Donzi parking below, take the 'copter to the 2.5 mile roadcourse (with garage) set back a bit from my own personal 10 mile stretch of beach and landing strip. Perferrably, this setup would be close to the Hawaiian islands. You said money is no object, right? C. Image Unavailable, Please Login
I think i would be cheaper just to build one from scratch. I could just see the county zoning hearing "You want to rezone your house lot to build a control tower on it??? What have you been smoking??"
My customised house would be huge. Prolly ten thousand sq feet. The garage would be maybe double or tirple that. In my house, I would have a gps system so I would never get lost. The living area would be have a 60'' LCD tv with full home theater and a huge couch. Maybe some of those lame fake plants or what ever. A big book case, it would be real books on all but on shelf. I would just pull on one of the books and the case would flip reveling a door to my huge warehouse sized garage. I would have one of those Beer Store cooler rooms as my fridge with plasma tv inside.I would have a basketball court, car wash, each room would be car themed in one way or another. In my bed room, I would take maybe an Escalde or H2 hummer and take the motor and stuff out, leave the climate control, sound system and turn the inside into a bed, leave the tires and put like 20'' chrome rims on it. I would have a huge pool round back, hot tub, patio, all that normal stuff. I would have a couple wind mills round back, to cut down on power bills which would be a *****. It would be on the ocean maybe in miami. That way I could store my huge power boat that way if I didnt pay a speeding ticket I could skip town and head to jamaica or what ever. an air strip would be in order also.
hmmm It really depends on the size of the family. But for arguments sake lets just say its three of us. Probably something like 5200 sq ft but completley personalized with a huge garage. By personalized i mean Huge theater room with the best stereo system money can buy. Ferrari themed office. Nice big kitchen (hey im half itallian) with an attached family room with 60 inch plasma with another sweet surround sound system. Big comfy couches too. Masterbedroom would be pretty cool. Have one of the Tvs that rises out of the furniture(always wanted one). HUGE shower, Im talking like 10 person with the rain showerheads. And on this one house i saw on tv it had like a water hatch that would just dump a ridiculous ammount of water on you. That would be pretty sweet. Basement would be the standard guy room. Arcade games, pool table, playstation, big screen, bar, cigar room, and workout room. Garage would be fun. Room for about 8 or 9 cars. Loft above with Plasma Tv surround sound and stocked with nothing but action movies and porno. In the backyard good size pool and hot tub with bar and bar b q sort of built in with the pool so u can swim up and get drinks and food. Then a go cart track in the back for parties and such. For the wife, she gets the huge kitchen huge closets and a second bathroom apart from the master all to herself (so she doesnt have to worry if her **** stinks). For the son/daughter if he is a youngin, his/her own playroom stocked with hot wheels. I think i got everything. Nothing to ridiculous right, im sure someone already has this sort of set up
carbon you should really read something about Penn's house from Penn and Teller. He has something like you described.
Well thats easy for me...Ive always wished I was an English Country Gentleman...something out of Pride and Prejudice So for me, Pemberley would do just fine... I only have a few requirements...I need a giant Music room...one in which I can store my immense antique instrument collection and practice. The centerpiece of the room would be a beautifully ornate baroque harpsichord. Then I need a library...An old fashion castle type libary with tall vaulted cielings and multi level shelves. The library would primarely house my music manuscript collection and CD collection. Inside would be the most comfortable antique sitting chairs possible in which I would spend most of my day listening to music. The whole house needs to be wired with a super state of the art speaker system so I could hear music wherever I go. My garage needs to look like a showroom, with marble floors, etc. I want it to house 10-15 cars and have direct access to some fun little roads that dart around all of my land...I could race around those as much as I pleased! For my travels to the states I would use a luxury penthouse high up in a building in both New York and LA. The design in those penthouses would be clean, modern, very white, with floor to ceiling windows... Now thats not asking much is it? Image Unavailable, Please Login
A few translations from houses I've lived through: "Bright open spaces": heating and aircon clump in spots. Example: The old "split levels": Can't use upstairs rooms in summer or downstairs rooms in winter. "Cathedral ceilings": Have you ever seen a clean, well heated cathedral? How do you vacuum a 16 foot ceiling? Even if you can't reach it, the spiders can. "Modern island kitchen": everything is on the wrong side of the center obstruction -- you lose more calories walking around the kitchen than you gain from the meal. Kitchen cabinets: There is no end to the number of bizzarre specialty items the kitchen collects; from egg white separators to belgian waffle irons to cheese knives to the corkscrew collection ("one of these ought to work") -- The kitchen needs more cabinet space than a well equipped auto repair shop. Other experiences: Garage, Kitchen, and living spaces: When laying these out, remember that you have to carry groceries in from the car -- they shouldn't be four parsecs apart. Similarly; how far is the coffee maker from your computer desk? How many commercials between the fridge and your TV room? Forced air heat isn't as efficient as baseboard hot water, but easier to add a house-wide humidifier. But zoned baseboard is more comfortable in winter, unless you're fond of temperature gradients. (Alas, baseboard radiators are for heat only: aircon is either forced air or a set of ceiling mounted heat absorbers using fairly exotic fluids.) Bathrooms: Modern designs tend to put massive bathrooms in and around the bedrooms. But remember that you need one near the living room, too. Put some thought into the fixtures -- the generic bathroom is based on tradition, not on state of the art. Browse plumbing catalogs. Don't just slap in an electric water heater -- a huge utility load, and a way to run out of hot water halfway through the shower. Consider tankless. "Living room": Most mis-named room in the house. The "living room" is the place you never go, so it looks good for company. The "family room" and/or den is where you do your living. Maybe the inclusion of an old fashioned, smaller "parlor" for company can give you back your "living room": check with your "interior decorator supervisor" (e.g. the other half). For married couples: each should have a room of their own -- in the cliche'd past, these would be workshop and sewing room. But people need to get away from each other once in a while. But if you don't have a lot of experience reading blueprints, you might want to window shop some building developments, to get a feel for what the floorplans look like in real life. You have to think about your average day in the proposed spaces.
i'd just have a one-bedroom condo on top of a huge underground parking garage... oh wait that's what i have sadly i only have one space in said garage
unlimited money to build a house eh? ok the house would be big, but not too big, maybe around 7500sqft. i'm thinking it would have 2 stories plus a basement. the basement would include a nice big home theater system, with a 106in tv, surrond sound, and leather reclining chairs. i would also have a mini bar down there, a billiard table, dart board, bathroom, another tv for videogames, a few arcade games. the first floor would have a nice elegant, open entrance. i would have a good sized kitchen complete with granite coutnertops, a subzero fridge, and a little, maybe 16in plasma tv. the living room would have a fireplace, a 60in plasma, big leather chairs and couch, and surrond sound. i would have a very elegant dining room complete with a chandelier that was made in italy. there would also be an office for me to do my work. the upstairs would include 5 bedrooms. the master bedroom would have a balcony, plus a big master bath with a jacuzzi and shower, his and her sinks. the other 4 bedrooms would each have a little bathroom too. outside would be a nice spacious patio. there would also be a good sized pool that would at one end have a beach-style entrance. the other end of the pool would be surronded by a big rock formation, which from outside the pool you could climb up to the top and get in the spa. water from the spa would be used as a water fall to the pool, heated of course. now the garage. first of all it would be the biggest part of the house. it would have marble floors, the same kind of lights they use at auto shows, it could house around 15 or so cars, a glass wall that you could see into when your in the house, a room attached where there would be countless books and memorbial. also in the middle of the garage would be a giant turntable where one car could rotate, of course the car up there would change everyday. i think that about covers my house.
Hmmm....I suppose we don't have to ask the question "what if I had unlimited time to waste on the internet"?
I'd need machine shop with a decent milling machine and lathe. This room could also double as my reloading room and indoor 10m air pistol range. It needs to be well lit with a decent workbench and peg board on at least one wall to hold tools. I'd need a big garage or a hangar to hold a few cars, a couple motorcycles and a small airplane. Given the noise factor, this might have to be far from the kitchen! So, it'd be neat to hook up some sort of under floor conveyor belt/dumb waiter from the garage/hangar to the kitchen. I'd like a house with lots of natural light. I don't know exactly how I'd do this for the first floor if I have two story house...mirrors? But, I think it'd be neat. I'd also like a library/study. Built in bookshelves, a drafting table in the corner. Haven't really thought this one out. I'd also like a fireman's pole from the 2nd floor to first. Kind of dumb, but I've always thought they were neat!
Give me a large aircraft hanger with a small apartment loft. Room to park anything, and a digital projector means drive-in sized television.
