Blogocentric Formulations

Day 25: "If you build it, they will come"

*Written as part of the "30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS" 

Day 25 Prompt: You are the architect of your dream house - describe your creation in detail.

Way back in the day, before I knew I wanted to be involved in the motion picture business, I thought about being an architect. I took a mechanical drawing class in junior high which included learning how to draw all kinds of technical schematics, but the project I really latched onto was when we had to first do a blueprint of our own house and then come up with our own floorplan for an imaginary house for our final exam. I suppose that was the origin of my "dream house" even though it's changed form over the years.

I actually still have the pre-sketch of that floorplan somewhere in my home files, done with mechanical pencil on a piece of graph paper. I looked for it hoping I could scan a copy and upload it into this blog entry, but alas I've squirreled it away into some box and it'll take a much larger-scale excavation endeavor to recover it. For the most part, I've transitioned over the years from both wanting a huge mansion (doesn't every kid? ) to wanting nothing more than simple home that's large enough to accommodate my immediate family and a few guests. My wife and I both have relatively simple tastes and have whittled our dream house down to really little more than a list of "wants" that would be wonderful to have in our home.

Here's the current list:

Stairs. After living in apartments for more than ten years (hey, it's expensive to buy a house in Los Angeles!), I really want my dream house to have stairs. I miss having multiple floors, going upstairs to go to bed, or downstairs to get something out of the kitchen. My wife likes ranch-style houses so this might become an issue, but for my money, I'd love to have a house with an upstairs and a downstairs.

Master bedroom upstairs. To go along with the last item on the list, I want the master bedroom to be upstairs. The house I spent the first twenty years of my life growing up in was extremely poorly laid out; the master bedroom was downstairs directly underneath the family room and kitchen upstairs, so my parents heard everything whenever they went to bed and we stayed up, had friends over, fixed something to eat, etc. I want a master bedroom that's upstairs and out of the way of the normal flow of household traffic.

Soaking tub and two sinks in the master suite. Another downside to apartment living is that there aren't a lot of luxury upgrades. Every master bathroom we've ever had has only included one sink and the smallest shower/tub combo they can find. When my wife and I shared a one-bathroom unit, it was a constant struggle to get ready to go out. Now that we have a two-bathroom unit, we actually use separate bathrooms just so we can get ready at the same time. In my dream house, I'd love to have two different sinks and a separate shower with a soaking tub. Jacuzzi jets would be nice, but I'd settle for one large enough that my wife and I can share at the same time without limbs awkwardly hanging out because it's only built for one.

Open concept. I love to cook and I love to entertain. The apartment we're currently in has an open concept where the living area and kitchen and dining room are all open and separated only by a kitchen island... and we love it! I can be whipping something up in the kitchen while still seeing the television, or participating in the conversation with people in the living room. My dream house would have the same kind of layout, where people can talk to one another even if they're in different rooms.

Enough bedrooms for everyone in my family everyone in my immediate family, plus a guest. I used to want a huge estate where I could have a bedroom for every member of my extended family and they could all come for Christmas and have their own rooms... but now that I've had to be responsible for actually cleaning a house, that seems like a lot of wasted space (that needs to be cleaned regularly!) just so we can have family over once or twice a year. So instead, I'd like enough bedrooms for our immediate family and maybe another extra one, maybe two for guests and to use as a home office. And for those holidays where everyone wants to come over, we can just break out the futons, sofa beds, and inflatable air mattresses!

A view of something. Another downside to apartment living is that there's rarely a view of anything except streets, other apartments, and building walls. I'd love to be able to look out my kitchen window and see the ocean, or even just out the bedroom window and see a backyard with some trees or something.

Basement. This will be incredibly difficult to find in Los Angeles, but I'd love a basement. Hey, since it's a dream house maybe I can buy a plot of land and build my own from the ground up! I think it'd be great to have the extra storage area a basement can provide... and maybe I can even turn it into one of those "man cave" things!

Secret passages. Okay, I'm really not joking. I'd love to have some kind of cool secret feature in the house. Maybe not necessarily "pull the third book from the left out of the shelf and find the secret vault" kind of thing, but maybe something along these lines: http://hiddenpassageway.com/.

A pantry. Another casualty of apartment life (seeing a pattern here?) is that there's very little storage for food. Just a couple cupboards to hold all of our utensils, cookware, food, glasses, etc. It'd be great to have a nice roomy pantry so we can actually shop at Costco and store the stuff somewhere other than the garage! To go with the aforementioned secret passages, one of the things I always through would be cool is a pantry with a door through it on the other side leading down to a wine cellar or basement of some kind. Maybe not "secret" so much as a "hidden" space that isn't clearly visible.

A yard. The last item on my list that also comes from living in an apartment is a yard. It doesn't have to be big, but I would love a bit of land so that I can look out at some landscaping rather than other buildings all the time. Maybe even some trees to hide the property lines. One of the things that I lament about modern housing developments is that they practically build the houses right to the property lines, maximizing interior square footage at the cost of landscape square footage. I'd love a house on a lot that's big enough to allow my future kids and pets to run around.

There are probably some other items I'm leaving off the list right now, and while I think that it's probably a long lists of "wants," I'd like to think that they're simple ones and not all that much to ask for. Still, a decent home in a decent area of Los Angeles still goes for $500,000 to $750,000, so I'm going to have to save up for a while before we can afford to get any house, let alone our dream house!