Sacred from Intrusion

Found (and loved) in The Sealed Letter:

Each person in a dwelling should, if possible, have a room as sacred from intrusion as the house is to the family.

Anonymous,
How to Behave (1865)

Dreamy Bed

Sweet. Very Nightmare Before Christmas. I want it very much.

They have some other furniture on their site, but none of the other beds compare to this one, the "Twig Bed", which is probably why you have to call for the price. Their lamps are pretty sweet too.

Nice Light for Pancakes

Wouldn't you die to have that morning light and a hot steamy plate of flapjacks with maple syrup?

Incredible Houses

Last night we saw The Incredibles. It was so stylish with retro sensibilities and so imaginatively rendered.

Sci fi, fantasy and animation provide some of the best dream-house inspiration; those genres discard limitations in favor of pure imagination and the result is pure DREAM house fodder.

Okay, so Syndrome's volcanic lair was SPECTACULAR!! You have to love the high ceilings, obsidian floors, the tunnels, the egglike lounge-rooms, the lighting . . . and of course the gigantic lava wall.

"Underground" and "lair" are two persistent dream house descriptors. Who can resist a cave made cozy? Underground is the ultimate in security and hibernation. In addition to the womblike appeal of anything underground or lairlike, those types of spaces defy consistently sharp edges and right angles. I especially like the space-age round-spaces of spaceships, etc. because they combine the organic roundness of nature with futuristic materials which to me provides the best of both worlds. The psychological comfort of being enveloped with the resilience and luxury of a technologically-advanced civilization.

There should be more real-life space age design with a mind for comfort and natural harmony. Ooooh, I did see a good example of that in an advertisement in Wired magazine. Maybe I'll have to scan that sometime.

Urban Gothic

When I mentioned my distaste for the industrial look in my "no grey" entry, I forgot to mention that I *do* like the look of urban decay, especially when decorated with contrasting lavish fabrics and furniture. I like the texture and dark personality of industrial wastelands . . . I just don't like that clean, sterilized, industrial new home look/feel. If there is depth and texture, a sort of industrial gothic thing would be swell for my dream house, if appropriately located in a city, not plopped ridiculously in the midst of a beautiful forest or field.

ADD

One of the reasons I'd prefer to have many small rooms connected mostly by hallways and sealed off by doors, is that I have attention deficit disorder. Many small rooms prevents clutter from one room spilling into another . . . with an open floor plan and lots of visibility from one room to another, there is more visual chaos and it's just exhausting for me. I derive focus and comfort from being in a limited, manageable space. Openness winds up feeling overwhelming for me. Sure I'd like a nice big expansive room or two in my dream house, but mostly I want to escape into smaller spaces. Even better if those rooms contain smaller cubbyholes, corners, and closets. Very nice.

At Least Three Stories

Presuming that my dream house contains a lot of space, and that this is a perfect world (hence the word "dream" as opposed to "nightmare") . . . I'd like to conserve on the footprint and build UP. For one thing it's spookier. For another it's kinder, environmentally. For another I get a feeling of security being ABOVE ground level. My dream house has a basement too with livable space, so make that four stories. Yum.

No Grey in my Dream House

Surfing through the architects' sites listed on the AIA Seattle - E-Source Center, there is so much industrial austerity dominating even the residential designs, it's so . . . cold. Sure, some of it is striking, at times even whimsical . . . but not fanciful, and certainly not hospitable.

I saw a home on one of these sites built near Mount Si which is very near where I grew up and it drove home the dissonance; here in western Washington where I have spent all of my 31 years, it's wet. It's green. It's damp. It's beautiful. There should be no grey. No concrete blocks. No grey no grey no grey. We have that overhead quite often. Maybe it's just that I think grey is fucking cold and a home should be a respite from the cold. But grey has no place in my dream house. Capisce?

How come no one is building Tim Burton-like structures instead of these boxes of flim-flam? They're so linear and unwelcoming. Curves, please and fewer right angles!

A Long Narrow Hallway

When I left my ex-husband I had a choice between two studio apartments: one with a big open room on the top floor with gorgeous southern light and a view of the courtyard below, and the other with three smaller spaces, windows staring straight into my neighbor's windows . . . and a long narrow hallway leading from the entrance, past the bathroom, past a closet (that you had to step up to as it was built over the bed which rolled in and out of its hiding place on wheels), and into the main living space.

I chose the apartment with the dungeon-like lack of light, no view, and the long narrow hallway.

The hallway is another reason I'd prefer a home with many smaller spaces as opposed to a more open floor plan with large rooms; the former is more conducive to tunnel-like hallways. I love the suspense of not knowing what is around the corner . . . even when you're intimately familiar with the geography of your home, that hallway retains some mystery while also conveying to visitors that they are entering an intimate place, that they don't know everything, that some doors are sealed to them . . . that there's more to discover.

Also, no matter how much I cherish beautiful light and pretty views, I am one who instinctively craves darkness, hibernation, and burrowing deep into my interior life. I feel safest in cavelike settings. There is more romance and adventure in the underground. The long hallway leads to spaces that are secret, private, and womblike.

Maybe it would be interesting to design a floor plan based on a woman's body . . .

Spa

In my dream house there is an area (are areaS?) with heated tile floors, perhaps in the mistress bath. The kind of heated tile floors they have at the Olympus Women's Spa in Tacoma: ah yes, the "granite stone room". Only in my dream house there are no asian women chattering noisily in my granite stone room while I'm trying to sleep. If there are any asian women in my dream house they'll be my quiet, docile little concubines. That's right, in my dream house there will be . . . employees. Well paid, and extremely subservient. With puffy nipples if I have anything to say about it, which of course I will as it's "my dream house".

Bidet

In my dream house there is at least one bidet. In the "master bath". Maybe I'll call mine the "mistress bath" and the "mistress suite".

Barbie Dream House

This little blog feels incredibly vulnerable and embarrassing. Childish, silly & girlish. It's like admitting that I still fantasize about having a Barbie Dream House. I mean, we *did* have a Barbie Dream House (lucky girls, we were!), but it wasn't as exciting as WANTING a Barbie Dream House before we actually got one.

It feels totally white trash and base to admit to wanting more, to laying in bed and doing nothing but what I can barely afford: fantasizing. It's not like this gets me any closer to the dream of custom home ownership . . . does it? I mean, I could be *working*.

I wonder how many people who watch the design shows on HGTV are actually home owners, and beyond that how many of them can actually afford (financially & time-wise) to do any of the stuff on there.

I owned a house once. Well, I mean I had a mortgage once. It's my ex-husband's now. The first thing I did after buying it was have a bunch of berber carpeting installed, charged to one of my credit cards. Excuse me, berber-LIKE. I also ordered beautiful custom-sized honeycomb shades for the windows. They were so nice. But it still wasn't a dream house, even though I gave thanks for it every day.

Many Small Rooms

In my dream house there are many small rooms. Little cozy caves. It's not that I don't like big open spaces, but I have some kind of psychological issue which makes it easier for me to fully relax when I'm cocooned in a tighter-fitting area where I can close off all the entrances, shut the doors, and be in a manageable, warmable nextlike area. I am a small person and I like cozy little hobbit rooms.

The other advantages to many small rooms, are greater opportunities for variety and eclecticism of design and mood. With a few grande, gigantic, large open spaces you are limited by a) fewer rooms, and b) the rooms are visually connected making it messy and ill-advised to vary the design of each room.