If you could add one room to your house, what kind of room would it be?
- A media room
- A home office
- An extra bathroom
- A mudroom
- Other
- My house is perfect the way it is.
You will not be able to change your vote.
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I voted Other. I'm not sure _which_ Other. At different times I think about a pantry, a root cellar, a shop, and a greenhouse/sunroom.
A shop.
I added a sunroom and I love it, so I voted 'perfect'. That's not to say that I wouldn't modify some of the rooms I've already got - I'd love a bigger bathroom and more closet space. But I don't need any more rooms - I am in that happy place where all the rooms in my house get used and I don't want to move out of that zone.
I think a family room would be the best addition to my home. I'm considering doing it inna the next year or so.
Darkworksite4:
El americano pasado hacia fuera ase la bandera
I agree with Ron about the family room. We want to turn a kitchen, den and florida room into one big, open kitchen-dining-family room. Is that adding a room?
We also want to put on an addition that will double the size of the master bathroom and add a reading room to the parents' suite. Is that adding a room?
I want to buy my mother's baby grand piano from my father. I'll need a place to put it. That's adding a room.
My house is _perfect_ the way it is.... EXCEPT I would ADORE having a screened in porch.
I need to expand my attic into usable space and create a master bedroom suite and at least one additional bedroom. Are there grants available for this?
I should have chosen "my house is perfect just the way it is" but I would really love to add a sunroom or outdoor living room. I love being outdoors and I think this room would give me the joy of being outdoors all year round, even during our New England winters.
I have a finished basement which we affectionately call "the lounge". It has a tv area with couch, chairs and tables, it also have a built in L-shaped bar with all the amenities and seats 8, we have the pool table area and board game area, as well as an office which is hidden around another corner. It is a very nice place to be, but I still feel like we are in the basement. I would like to lighten it up somehow. It has two very small windows which are close to the ceiling, since we are underground. Any suggestions.
My suggestion for more light are window wells. Then you can put in bigger widows. I've seen some pretty nice ones with a terraced effect and planted with shrubs and flowers.
Edited 8/24/2004 8:38 pm ET by Danno
Hi Danno,
Just what is a window well? The 2 windows that I have are high up, close to the ceiling, and are about 14" high x 24" wide. Pretty small.
A window well is basically a hole in the ground, on the outside of the building. One side of the hole is the wall of the house and the rest of it is a retaining wall. Basically a well with your house exterior basement wall on one side and a curved wall making the rest of the "well". It's a well full of light, instead of water. Then you just make the window as big as you want to allow the light in. Because the well can indeed hold water (as Martha says, "a bad thing"), you have to make provsion for drainage in the bottom of it. Windo wells have an added advantage of allowing egress from below grade in places where you have bedrooms below grade and code requires egress. Hope this makes sense. If not, let me know and I'll try again!
>> Just what is a window well?
http://www.siteworkdeveloping.com/basement_window_well-2.jpg
Ah, Thank you, Uncle Dunc! One picture is worth a thousand words!
Well thank you! I'm not sure hub wants to do anything major. I just saw the article on putting a window on a wall and having lights behind it to give the effect of a real window. I think that is worth a try.
Dunc,
I'm a little curious about having the downspout drain into the well. Wouldn't you want to keep water away from the window penetration? Especially when the gravel beneath appears to almost be touching the bottom of the window. How does that system work, is there drain tile in the well?
Don't blame me. Not my window well. :) I just did a Google image search and picked the first one that gave a really clear notion of what a window well is.
But you're right, unless there's drain tile under there, or a pretty good size gravel filled dry well, that downspout doesn't look like a good idea.
Edited 8/27/2004 3:11 pm ET by Uncle Dunc
The downspout as shown is bad. It looks like the window and well were a retrofit, and the existing downspout was just scooted over. The downspout should have been relocated somewhere else.
I need three more rooms: a full library, a craft room with double-density storage and triple-density light (hard to manage, since storage generally eats the wall-space that the windows would be in!), and a chapel.
Besides that, I need ideas on improving my closet. All those "organizers" are lovely, but I have yet to see another closet like mine - it's about 12 feet long, but the doors only open over the middle six feet or so, leaving two inaccessible (and dark) dead ends. A battery-operated light was no help. I'm involved in medieval reenacting and historical craft demonstrations, so a large chunk of my clothes are floorlength, killing the idea of double-decking a majority of the closet. In Michigan, with two strong seasons, it's got to hold two seasons' worth of clothes, plus the bulky garb. I've been tempted to add more doors, but that would remove the only walls on that side of the room, one of which has a bookcase....
A pet peeve about organizing suggestions: hanging organizers usually assume you have a detached rod to hang them from. But every apartment, condo, and house I've lived in since 1970 has these metal sheets that nail to the shelf above, with the closet rail attached at the bottom. Think of a "6" with the long part facing out. The only way to hang something up is to put the hanger in with the hook pointing forward, and nothing can go around the rod.
How deep is your closet? That will affect any suggestions you might get.
Also, I couldn't quite understand your explanation of the rod system in your closet. Could you take another stab at it, or a picture?
Thanks.
The closet is 2 feet deep. That means that the hanger leaves an inch or two behind it so the clothes don't scrape too badly. There's no room to walk in front of the clothes in the dead ends - just a few inches between the front of the hanger tip and the wall. Effectively no space at all if a sleeve is hanging there.
OK, let's try an illo of the arrangement...
=========================
O
The double line at the top is the closet shelf. The backslashes are the piece of metal - it actually has more curve as in comes out to allow space on the top and over the front of the rod for the hanger hook, and it curls under the rod (designated in cross-section by the O). It is nailed every few inches to the underside of the rod and the front edge of the shelf. In this case the closet door is to the right, and the "6" shape is flipped left-to-right. It has one crucial advantage over a detached rod: it does not sag, as it is braced the full length by the continuous piece of metal.
I'm not used to this forum yet - if you'd be good enough to forward that last message to everyone???
Thanks....
The message makes it to everybody by default.
So it sounds like you have 3 ft x 2ft on either side that can't be reached and you are unwilling to expand the doors? Well, I have a couple of ideas in my head, but it kind of depends on whether you are really having problems with light or with accessibility.
If it's light, you might consider adding more real light fixtures. The battery operated ones aren't too bright, as you found, but you could add low voltage across the entire ceiling of the closet and illuminate it properly. Another way to get light into those dark corners is through the use of transom windows into the closet. They are high enough that you can put furniture on the wall, but let in light from the room.
For accessibility problems, I would sacrifice some wall. My solution would probably be to turn the end with the most useful wall (that you want to keep the most) into shelving, three feet deep, in an L to the closet rod. Or I'd have that be that doubled up rods for shirts and pants (ALL your clothes can't be full length?) I'd open up the wall on the other end and add new doors so you have 9 feet of unobstructed closet.
the one thing that I miss in the house that we're in now is that we don;t have a mudroom. With 5 kids I usually dread the spring and fall with all the mud that they can track in, esp since we live smack in the middle of farmers fields!
If I could add one room to my house it would be a sunroom with high ceilings and walls of glass overlooking our woods.
Dear madam, sir,
While looking for a nice book to give to my wife for her birthday on New England decorating (we both love the USA and live in Holland; a lot of people here are pro-USA, you would be surprised!) i ran into one of the books you publish. This would be ' Capes: Design Ideas for Renovating, Remodeling and Building New' and then on to this website. Always like to vote. So now i do not know what a mudroom is and decided for other. What is a mudroom? By the way: do you think that she would like the book? It looks wunderful.
Jan Kees Beers, Holland
Hello, and welcome to House Chat.
Never having met your wife, I have no way of knowing whether she would like the book you mention, but I can tell you what a mudroom is. It's a small utility room or alcove, usually just inside a secondary door (back door or kitchen door), where one can take off and store outdoor clothing, footwear, sports/gardening equipment. Often there is a bench, coat hooks and shelving/storage.
If you do a Google search for mudrooms, you will learn more. Ruth DobsevageTaunton New Media
Cheers to Holland!!!
If your wife likes capes/ New England, I recommend architect, Royal Barry Wills' book "Houses for Good Living". It shows alot of his capes in New England, colonial houses too. Alot of good interior pictures-mudrooms,too. You can google it- probably on Amazon.com .
Have been to "the Dolphins" in Amsterdam- nice place!