POLL: Your (SP) Dream Home?

[Captain]

Example of Option 1:


Example of Option 12:


You can vote up to 3 times and feel free to post pictures.  

[J. Wilhelm]

Honestly folks, I'd prefer my own airship.... but as Victorian houses are concerned, I don't have to go too far:

The Littlefield House outside of the Univ. of Texas at Austin (© 2007 (CC) Larry D. Moore)


I would love to wake up every day in that home, at a suitably late hour, and then upon hearing the clock tower bells, go for lunch, taking a short walk past all the pretty college girls   across Guadalupe street to stuff myself with good Thai food at Madame Mam's restaurant... (I guess I really never left college in my mind).

[Nikola Tesla]

I don't have pictures but I note a theme to my three picks:  remoteness from others!  It almost doesn't matter if I can't make it SP at all provided I get that peace and quiet.  My dream is less a center for mad-scientist-world-takeover (because if I took over the world I'd have to run it) and more of a place to study and experiment uninterrupted and undisturbed.  So I go for the things with solid doors or big stone walls, or distance from the rest of society...

[Alexis Voltaire]

I want to live on a riverboat like the Not For Hire from Riverworld:

http://www.allmoviephoto.com/photo/2010_riverworld_008_big.html

[Birdnest]

It was a real toss-up between the Gothic Church and the Victorian House ... but Gothic church won out.  Besides, I've already got a Victorian house (and the Birdnest: a remote cabin ... my first choice).  Gothic churches have such great acoustics that give an evil laugh that special quality.

The underground lair was a nice addition - I picked that one too.  It would need a observation tower or be situated seaside along a cliff.

[Captain]

I don't have pictures but I note a theme to my three picks:  remoteness from others!  It almost doesn't matter if I can't make it SP at all provided I get that peace and quiet.  My dream is less a center for mad-scientist-world-takeover (because if I took over the world I'd have to run it) and more of a place to study and experiment uninterrupted and undisturbed.  So I go for the things with solid doors or big stone walls, or distance from the rest of society...

I understand what you mean.  There have been several local island homesteads for sale here this summer on Craigslist: http://juneau.craigslist.org/reo/3222774873.html or  http://juneau.craigslist.org/reo/3140176193.html   Not that you have to try too hard to be remote here. 

J.Wilhelm - beautiful. 

[W. S. Marble]

I would make a pitch for Craftsman-style houses to be added.  They were popular from the mid-to-late 1800's until the 1930's.  My ideal craftsman would be in a neighborhood of similar homes, and my dream vehicle (another thread for another day) would be parked out front.  I'd sit on my porch, admire the sunset, and shoot at the neighbors' kids when they crossed the property line.  Idyllic.

[Captain]

I would make a pitch for Craftsman-style houses to be added.  They were popular from the mid-to-late 1800's until the 1930's.  My ideal craftsman would be in a neighborhood of similar homes, and my dream vehicle (another thread for another day) would be parked out front.  I'd sit on my porch, admire the sunset, and shoot at the neighbors' kids when they crossed the property line.  Idyllic.

I added the option although I had to look up exactly what you meant: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Craftsman

[von Corax]

• Old farmhouse. I'm currently in an Ontario Farmhouse Gothic house that was built by my great-great-grandfather's brother-in-law. Nice place, bitch to heat, and it desperately needs a tower!

• Underground lair. 300-odd acres around the house — I just need to decide which corner of the basement to start digging in.

• Live-aboard boat. I currently have nothing even remotely like this, but I always admired Duncan MacLeod's boat, the season the show was set in Paris: a converted Seine coal barge.

[Captain Lyerly]

Well... I went for a Craftsman-style house.  Stone-built, walls two feet thick, with a fireplace; hardwood floors throughout - quartersawn oak, maybe 3 inch boards.  A deep and broad tiled verandah.  A large, welcoming front door leading to the living room; a study for myself off the front room, painted scarlet, of course.  A formal dining room, then the butler's pantry and kitchen; master bedroom, master bath, and a sewing room for La Contessa opening off a short hall opposite.  A guest room with en suite bath at the back; a private and cozy brick courtyard, with a larger patio for bigger gatherings.  A garage/workshop past the courtyard; a classic motorcycle in the garage, the Beast (Captain Lyerly's Shooting Brake) parked in the driveway, and an unusual and very hot sports coupe in the porte-cochere.

Enough lawn for space and privacy without becoming a burden; perhaps a private park across the street (we will have the City maintain that, though it should be owned in common by the people who live around it).  Oh, let's go ahead and have a finished upstairs, with a couple more bedrooms, another full bath, an extra kitchen, and a long central room that can be converted to a home theatre.  Some storage under odd gables, and that should do it.

Oh.  Wait... I live there already.  Lovely place really.  I love this place, and love my steamy home town as well.

Please forgive the atrocious pun, but it is the only suitable room for my study, and it was already painted this interesting color... so I do have a Study in Scarlet.



Cheers!

Chas.

[James Harrison]

I chose a Victorian house, Gothic church and Craftsman house, in that order.  Though truth be told I did have an altogether different idea about what was meant by Craftsman house; differences in language and all that.  A British Arts & Crafts house looks more like this:

[Aleister Crow]

First choice was caves and underground. It's just always appealed to me for some reason.

After that I chose Victorian house and Gothic Church, the two most impressive looking, and two most likely to be haunted.

[Ada Thorold]

I chose a Victorian house, Gothic church and Craftsman house, in that order.  Though truth be told I did have an altogether different idea about what was meant by Craftsman house; differences in language and all that.  A British Arts & Crafts house looks more like this:

I think there may be something lost in translation here. When I read 'traditional Victorian' I though of redbrick terraces not anything like this:

Example of Option 1:

As for me, definitely arts and crafts. Or even better a converted Victorian industrial building of some description.

~A~

[James Harrison]

Thing is, what is a 'traditional' Victorian?  In the UK at least the Victorian era was a time of reviving and reusing a vast number of historic architectural styles:

-Grecian
-Roman
-Classical
-Palladianism
-Gothic
-Vernacular

In addition to which there was a growing movement toward a number of new styles:

-High Victorian Gothic (quite different to neo-Medieval)
-Arts and Crafts
-The very earliest beginnings of Modernism

And those are just off the top of my head! 

[Captain]

I rarely heard the term "craftsman house" before so I am not sure what all that means to each person.  I would not mind hearing and seeing more though.  If it is important enough for folks to dream about there must be something to it

Liveaboard boats are not uncommon here since rent in our "sealed" community (no roads in or out) is outrageous except in the harbors.  There seem to be a few sternwheeler liveaboards for sale on various rivers like: http://www.lifeonthewater.org/DNN/Default.aspx?tabid=3658  My lady-wife has made it very clear that a liveaboard is out of the question.    She did finally permit me to buy an older 25' Saratoga even though she dislikes small boats.  20 minutes later it had a new name that I cannot spell and a tasteful autumn decor theme so I cannot even pretend that it is still my boat.  Sorry to go off on a tangent but I just like sharing this little story.  (I would love to trade it in on a sailboat. I enjoy the quiet sailing so much more.)



This "hobbit house" in Wales is one of the most famous underground homes but there are also several old missile silos for sale: http://www.missilebases.com/properties

This is a nice example of a converted (is the term "unspiked?") church:  http://dornob.com/countryside-church-building-converted-into-luxury-home/?ref=search

[Maets]

I am living in my dream home.  Not on your list.  Not sure of the best name for it.  Probably - Rustic Contemporary

Cedar outside, some beams, brick.  Fairly open inside.  On the perfect piece of property.

[Ada Thorold]

Thing is, what is a 'traditional' Victorian?  In the UK at least the Victorian era was a time of reviving and reusing a vast number of historic architectural styles:

Very true, I guess I'm thinking of the endless terraces of Leicester and Birmingham of which I am very familiar. Saying that I was in Bournville today so it's arts and crafts all the way!

I have never seen any examples of the American 'traditional Victorian' on this side of the pond. Anyone know of any?

~A~

[Captain]

Thing is, what is a 'traditional' Victorian?  In the UK at least the Victorian era was a time of reviving and reusing a vast number of historic architectural styles:

Very true, I guess I'm thinking of the endless terraces of Leicester and Birmingham of which I am very familiar. Saying that I was in Bournville today so it's arts and crafts all the way!

I have never seen any examples of the American 'traditional Victorian' on this side of the pond. Anyone know of any?

~A~

This is what "Victorian" meant where and when I grew up (near Pittsburgh):



Even across the US "Victorian" seems to carry different meanings especially when real estate brokers are using it to inflate a house's price.   
For the purposes of this poll I would like to request that we focus on the "dream" rather than the architecture.  Having said that, I would love to go on an extended "Victorian" home tour to learn more of the different styles. 

[Esper Ranger]

If I were a single man my ideal SP dwelling would be either a large lighthouse or a large windmill (though I imagine the noise of the gears would drive me nuts quickly).

[Uncle Arthur]

Second empire for me (Ala Addams Family)

[J. Wilhelm]

Well, Captain's question was "do you have a dream home steamy or otherwise?"  So I have only answered half of the question.

Let me explain.  I have already lived in a dream house.  What follows is an extremely long description as I have no photographs to show you, only memories. This is my childhood home in Mexico City (1972-1987).  Click on the spoiler if you have more than a few moments of free time and would like to read how crazy real world houses can get...

*Dressed in robe and kepi, I sit down in front of the fire.  The monkey butler approaches with a silver tray.  I light my pipe, exhale and start recounting...*

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I was raised by my grandparents in Mexico City.  My grandfather happened to be a civil engineer and in the very early 70's he was a Govt. administrator for the Federal Public Works Dept. and also doubled as a civil engineer in a private construction company.

He had just recovered from a financial disaster when I was born.  To top it off his daughter -  my mother had divorced and wasn't mature enough to raise me at age 19 in New Orleans.  Hence the need for the double jobs.  The upswing of that is that effort is that he made a lot of money (c. 1970), and that allowed him to buy a small plot of land in an area which used to be the ranch of a former president of that country and eventually that development would become a rather posh neighbourhood (we had the Chinese Ambassador to Mexico as a neighbour, to give you an idea).

My grandfather wasn't that wealthy, but being a civil engineer he had special dispensation from the Govt. such that he was free to build and design any structure he wanted without permits.  Having little money he bought a plot on the side of a super steep hill that was 4 stories above street level - a really undesirable plot in the development.  It was so steep, that the side of the hill had been excavated to make a terrace for the street and thus all other neighbours would eventually have to excavate large blocks of dirt from the hill to bring their houses to street level....  But not my grandfather.  Since he was there first, he started building the house little by little, "bungalow style" literally room by room over the span of 8 years.

The style of the house was ... indescribable.  The topology of each of the joined buildings was like a Swiss Chalet; a wide building with low shallow-angled roof.  The construction was fired brick masonry (extra large size hand-made bricks) and steel reinforced concrete.  Since this was the 1970s decade, large picture windows were in vogue.  And when I say large I mean huge. As in trapezoidal, ungodly large and horribly expensive,.  The whole house was contemporary in a rather rustic Frank Lloyd Wright kind of way.  Fired bricks for walls, glazed with lacquer on the inside, with orange-brown tones.  White roofs in concrete painted white.  The large trapezoidal windows were framed in thin modern aluminium and mahogany frames (can't fathom what that would cost today in the United States).

The purpose of the Windows was to give a view of what essentially was a small pine forest in the plot of land next to us (dry and cool high altitude desert clime for Mexico City).  My grandmother went as far as demanding that two trees at the centre of the plot not be cut under ANY circumstances, leaving my grandfather in a bind.  The colours of the garden were a nearly monochromatic deep emerald green between the grass and the pines

And what would seem as the worst infraction on the human senses: a Royal Blue carpet... WHAT YOU SAY ?!?  Yep.  Deep dark royal blue carpets.  The odd thing folks, is that the colour scheme somehow WORKS.  It just does.  I don't know how.  I think the key is of it all is to have all dark colours; dark brown/reddish tones (mahogany), dark orange-terracotta, dark royal blue all contrasting segments of pure white painted concrete. All of the furniture is either mahogany or walnut stained wood.  Well slap me silly!  Dark brown/orange, Blue and White was the colour map.  But it works.

The entire kitchen in keeping with the blue theme was lined in terracotta and hand painted cobalt-blue over white tiles.  A colour scheme harking back to the Moorish days of Spain; a rather ubiquitous colour scheme handed down from Asia to Europe and shared by China, the Netherlands, Spain, and naturally the colonies -Mexico throughout the ages....  Can you guess what the colour of all the dinnerware was?  Again hand painted cobalt blue on white.  Deep cobalt blue hand-blown glassware - all typically rustic in the Mexican style.  I will never be able to forget that colour.

Now, each room in the house was at a slightly off-level from the next one (remember each room was built separately?) The kitchen area was at the centre of the house exactly four stories above street level.  The living room half a story down to the "west" (again think Brady Bunch architecture here folks), and the surprise was a small indoor pool half a level up from the main level to the "north".  The floor around the pool finished in terracotta and the pool itself a miniature lap pool made of concrete painted light blue. Did I mention a semi-transparent fibre-glass ceiling over dark brown wooden beams?

And toward the "east." along that staircase which went by the pool level, one was led to a second story  almost above the kitchen area, with 2-1/2bedrooms and a small kitchenette, originally intended to serve as an "apartment" for when the children and grandchildren came to visit.

Now if you have a good 3-dimensional imagination you have figured out by now that somehow there must be a very tall ceiling to all of this which comprises the "west" north" and "east wings of the house.  A 3 storey-high ceiling to be precise.  And what do you find at the centre of this spiralling hall and staircase to the bedrooms?  The two trees my grandmother saved, of course. WE HAD TWO "INTERIOR TREES!"  At first the ceiling was translucent (plexiglas) to allow for light for the trees.  But the summer monsoons made that idea impractical, and my grandfather decided to build a hard roof with wood beams concrete and cedar wood for lining.  which eventually would mean the slow demise of the lower part of the trees....

I want you to imagine a Christmas tree, make that two - indoors - with giant glass spheres.  It's 9:00 PM on Christmas Eve.  Jazz music plays softly all along the house.  It's Stan Getz playing a Bossa Nova tune by AC Jobim and sung by Astrud Gilberto.  After dinner from the center level of the level of the house you go down half a level into the receded living room.  Family and friends are sitting on the two couches in front of a really modern fireplace that looks like a cone with an arched  opening for hearth. The entire wall of the living room is a window.  The trees are illuminated at night by way of green flood lights to accentuate the green  of the trees.

If instead  of going up from the kitchen level, one goes down, toward the "east" there is a staircase leading to a room half of which was overhanging the street level.  Overhanging you say?  Yes.  Overhanging.  Again, my civil engineer genius grandfather worked to build a chalet-like wide master-bedroom half of which was supported on massive pre-tensed reinforced concrete cantilever beams over the street.

If you were walking along the side walk of the street below and happened to look above you, you would see this fantastic cantilevered room 4 stories above the street above what seemed to be a nearly vertical cube of dirt.  The viewer would have absolutely no idea how people got there, unless that part of the house was the rear of another house facing some other unseen street.

And here lies my grandfather;s greatest achievement in that house:  Originally my grandparents used the neighbouring plot of land (where the little pine forest was) to climb to the house along a brick road of sorts.  It took some time before my grandfather decided but eventually he would buy that next plot of land.  In the meantime there was a risk that someone would buy the plot, leaving the house stranded four stories high.

How to solve that problem:  Start by excavating a garage at the base of the hill at street level.  Then excavate a spiralling tunnel from the street level through the giant cube of dirt to the hall between the master bedroom and the staircase to the kitchen of the house.  Problem?  Major endeavour worthy of the Hoover Dam?  Nop.  No problem at all.  A lot of hand labour (cheap in Mexico), a few tonnes of hard blue granite boulders, some ridiculous amount of concrete, I-beams, re-bars and for the ceiling of the tunnel pre-tensed steel in concrete-foam panels.  A spiralling tunnel with boulder rock walls worthy of the best 1950's horror B-movie.  Perfect for the Bride of Frankenstein or the remake of Nosferatu.  Nuclear attack proof.  A resting level in the middle of the mountain with a fridge and some storage room (imagine proper doomsday scenario), and from there a straight concrete staircase with 2 levels to the master bedroom and one extra level to the kitchen.

As years went by my grandmother became ill with a heart condition.  My grandfather built a 3-story scissor-style elevator cube shaft on the next plot of land connecting to the garage.

Any questions?

*cleans pipe, monkey butler brings another silver tray with tea and biscuits*

My grandfather, Mr. Carlos Bazan, is still alive with us here in Austin.  He has barely a clue of what Steampunk means, just what he knew I had built with my hands when we were living together and I was trying desperately to find employment (he is now at a home for the elderly), but by Job, if anyone deserves the title of Steampunk, by default it's him.  If I live to become half the man that he is I will consider myself lucky.

*lights pipe and ponders future*

Although I think it's impossible and impractical, I would like to go back some day, and recover that property before I die...

EDIT: I found Googlemap photos of the exterior of the house 7 months later; see this thread Page6: http://brassgoggles.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,37460.msg850159.html#msg850159

[von Corax]

I'm imagining this house to be the bastard love child of Moshe Safdie and Antoni Gaudí.

[J. Wilhelm]

I'm imagining this house to be the bastard love child of Moshe Safdie and Antoni Gaudí.

Thing is it looked far more natural than that.  The rooms individually were rather low, unpretentious, with just the centre hall where the trees were being the tall part.  The two trees protruded from the roof, by the way, creating a nightmarish scenario when trying to insulate the roof as summer rains are copious.

I really miss that house.

EDIT  Ha ha!  I just realized than Christmas Eve description is a little Austin Powers....  Yeah baby!  Oh behave!

[bicyclebuilder]

Right now we live in a house similair to this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Totally un-Steampunkable. To Steampunk any room would be in vain, because of the overall look of the house. Probably just the bathroom or garage could be Steampunked.

My dream SP house?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Birdnest]

Right now we live in a house similair to this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Totally un-Steampunkable. To Steampunk any room would be in vain, because of the overall look of the house. Probably just the bathroom or garage could be Steampunked.

My dream SP house?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Love the second picture ... and that was a great movie as well!

The hobbit hole a few posts back is similar to a 'root cellar' that we plan on building in the garden ... along with a greenhouse setting on an underground (mostly) pool.  The Birdnest is very soon due for some cast iron railings and some other gothic additions (slate roof, copper flashings and gutters, pigeon spikes on the ridge, cast iron and brass brackets, and a paint job or sleeve for the chimney ... a balcony or two perhaps) for the final destination of being a whimsical gothic / victorian / retro-future chalet.  The siding and roofing currently on it was ... expedient.  Ultimately, it will be a cross of my three picks (only waaaaaaay smaller - it's only 1100 sf and we don't want it much larger).