I've been carefully designing my dream house, taking into account every practical concern except the money that would make it possible (which is probably IMpossible) - location, laundry chute, solar panel, dumb waiter, a drip dry closet for the laundry room, efficient spaces, fung shui, storage, activity allotments, ect. - as well as those simply pleasant - the grotto, walled garden, garden room, aquariums, hot tub, jacuzzi, steam room, pool, fire pit, hammock, carefully planned views from windows, dance space, ect. I'm having a good deal of fun doing it and hope to build a model of it with Jeb after I've finished this stage. I'm treating it as though it isn't an impossible dream....
I was thinking ornamental screening like this...

...with stalactic-stalagmite pillars at its corners in the back of the grotto area beside the little cavelett housing the washer and dryer to create the drip-dry closet. A fan overhead of course.
Bonnie looked at the complexity of the design and, wrongly assuming it was for a large house, said, "I don't think I could ever live in a house that big. It would be overwhelming.
If she'd read any of the dimensions, she'd know that the house is not actually so huge as it is complex. No room is any larger than it has to be for the purposes to which it will be assigned and all are set up in such a way to place the minimum footprint on the earth and on each other, though it will look much smaller on the outside than it actually is on the inside - an illusion I plan to orchestrate with considerable finesse.
In point of fact, the house is actually not much larger than the modest split-level home I live in now. Looks can be deceiving. Good things CAN come in small packages.
Jeb likes the twin slides shooting to the grotto in opposite curves: a dry one to the little gym; a wet one, through a waterfall, to the pool.
But why to all of the above...? We can and do travel to fun and beautiful places (though we can't always afford to take everyone we'd like to with us) and though our home isn't perfectly 5-S'd, it does all it needs to do for us. We do not need the level of home pleasure and perfection I have been so busily designing on my screen of light. It would be nice all the same - just not for us alone.
We're grandparents now, on the crux of growing old. The nest is on it's way to getting empty, so no need for nesting behavior now. But what do I think of most when I entertain the idea of my dream house? I think how fun it would be to fill it with friends and family... and I keep finagling the spare bedrooms in there and everything I know the kids would enjoy.
Yes Amy, I did put aside space for a piano and a sewing machine... not big, but sufficient.
Yes Mom, there are gardens and birds aplenty.
Yes Jeb, the kitchen is roomy, there is a Captain's Walk for stargazing on, and the gym includes a Wii after the WEEEEEEE of shooting down the slide to it.
Yes Andy, there is a pool table.
Yes Jeb, Mom, and Andy, there will be a nice wood shop.
Yes everyone, there are plenty of shelves for books and, oh yes, much have big screen TV. Never had that before. I think it would be fun to watch movies on together.
Yes Vanessa and Levi, there will be swings and slides and manner of places to play.
No Bonnie, it's not nearly so huge as you think. Calm down.
Fred... You never really say what you want. Hot tub? Speak up, I can't hear you.
Come stay and play?
If they won't, then I guess we'll just have to make it a Bed and Breakfast.
I walled that one small Japanese Garden because I'd love some starry warm nights to sleep out there in the round net-curtained bed hanging from a tree and a friend here has pointed out the danger of axe murderers marauding in the night. I think he's been watching too many horror flicks but.... better safe than sorry I guess. I'd hate to have to be jumping at every little noise. I'll keep a big puppy dog by me and feel even safer.
Meanwhile, I guess there's another reason I'm so intent on this dream and, ironically (if that's the right word), it's for the same reason religion lost all of its shine for me: Iran. In Iran, everything I enjoyed was forbidden in public. In private, there was MUCH less forbidden. Think of the fabled harem of lore: once you enter, you are never allowed to exit, but all manner of luxury and pleasure will be sumptuously provided within - the quintessential gilded cage. I do not like to be trapped in a cage. But if ever I were trapped in my home like that again, I'd need a little gilding so as not to go completely out of my mind. In Iran, in a completely ungilded dreary cage, I dreamt about that all the time... plotted and planned for how I could gild it in lieu of actual freedom. The vestiges still remain.
Another little side thought... I have read a great many books on the subject of accidental and learned OBE and was particulary interested in those where the traveler visits the "heavens" people have designed for themselves (and the hells for those who fear it) between lives... how they build and see what they want and often do not see what others have likewise done.
Various religious groups sometimes maintained their religious communities after death, seemed unaware that they'd even died, maintained around them the same scenes they'd always lived with, deleting only those they specifically disliked, and were completely oblivious to all around them and the fact that any but a member of their religion could even be there. Those always made me giggle. Manacles of spirit are so much realer than those of the physical, but they are self-imposed at it is possible to shuck them at a decision point. But some souls like them, thank you very much.
But individuals - often nonreligious and perfectly aware of their ephemeral state - built their dream homes too. They were oblivious to others around them doing the same too except as they had a spiritual connection of some sort with each other. You know how you link to others you are in simpatico with? Well there, it seemed, you couldn't even see or interact with anyone else unless you had that connection or were really looking hard.
In my house, I'd like the opportunity to fully connect on many levels. Not sure what I mean by that... but I think, somehow, this is something happens most potently, albeit willynilly on many occasions, at the physical level of experience.
What would you like in a dream house? And why would you want it?