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Chrissy and I have had a fun year. A road trip across the country to visit Chris’s niece in California, we have re-discovered the joy of live concerts, and have had some nice day and overnight trips so far this year. We are looking forward to a couple concerts, a Broadway play or two, and a trip to tour the Frank Lloyd Wright Falling Water House in PA. Still, we can’t be on the road all the time, and when I’m home, I like to spend time in my favorite room. But which room is my favorite?
A few of the HumbleDollar regulars who know me might say, “well duh, it’s got to be the Vinyl Resting Place (VRP)”. That’s the room that houses my vintage hi-fi and a library of tunes from my youth all the way up to new releases from Paul McCartney and Willie Nelson. The VRP also serves as a great place to put my feet up to read a book, take a nap, or watch some college football.
Still, there’s the living room. The place where Chrissy and I drink our morning tea and coffee while catching up on the news, and where I attempt to compose entertaining posts for the HumbleDollar. It’s also the room where, in the evening, we settle in to stream a great movie. The space also includes the kitchen and dining room, which hosts gatherings of friends and family.
Don’t forget the bedroom, a source of much contentment. Snuggling with the missus, watching re-runs of Holmes on Homes or Million Dollar House Hunter, or just getting a much needed night’s rest; those are compelling reasons to vote for the bedroom.
And no discussion of favorite rooms would be complete without mentioning the bathroom. So there, I mentioned it.
Moving on, what about the garage? It’s not just for parking the car, you know! It’s also my putter-around place. The garage is extra deep, so I was able to install a nice workshop. Nothing fancy, mind you, I’m no carpenter or mechanic, still, I enjoy simple projects, and being a child of the 60s/70s, when muscle cars roamed the roads, I still enjoy pampering my wheels.
At the end of the day, I really don’t pick favorites, although the other rooms accuse the Vinyl Resting Place of being the ‘chosen’ one.
Whether still working or already retired, life can be like a pressure cooker. Our homes should be the place we look forward to returning to at the end of day to let the steam out.
If you think political discussions are spirited, just for fun try logging on to sites dealing with topics like “Vinyl versus CD or Streaming” or “Analog versus Digital”. Lots of interesting technical and scientific data exist, but strongly held personal beliefs reign. My non-expert advice: Buy what you enjoy listening too, never mind what others say.
I have zero musical talent, but I love listening to music, both live and recorded, and I know a little about the neuroscience of audio perception and basic acoustics. Dan Smith below mentions the important fact that the room will interact with the speakers.
The late Siegfried Linkwitz’s goal was to produce a home speaker system which worked with the room, not against it, to create a convincing sonic illusion that the recorded performers were in the room with you. For details, engineers and enthusiasts on this site might enjoy perusing: http://www.linkwitzlab.com
I have his flagship system in my basement which is a very large space (about 16,400 cubic feet; they perform better in large rooms). If I’m busy with something on the main floor or am just too lazy to go downstairs, our far less expensive but convenient system is good enough. The brain is clever about enhancing and filling in when listening to less than state-of-the-art systems. And while my ears are 73 years old and I can’t hear as well as I used to, I can quickly tell whether the reproduced sound approaches a level of realism.
When I moved into my Connecticut condo, I found the living room was not suitable for music – the cathedral ceiling steals away the treble.
So I installed my system in the bedroom, which is about 10 x 20 with an 8 foot ceiling. It sounds OK, and I haven’t even put up any room treatment. I keep my 4000 records in a walk-in closet. I am currently only using one turntable, my Basis 2001, but I am going to get my VPI going once my buddy makes a second rack for me.
Ormode, people don’t realize how a room can mess with sound. I use a subwoofer to gently augment the bass. It sounds perfect in my normal listening location, but can sound muddy in other parts of the room. I don’t want to ugly up the space with bass traps. One of my winter projects is to play with different locations for the sub in order to find a solution.
We recently installed an infrared sauna in a spare bedroom. It’s quickly becoming our favorite room!
Mike, I would love to have an infrared sauna, but I can’t talk Chris into the purchase.
How do you manage to select great movies to stream? Finding one always seems hit or miss to me.
Jo Bo, I let Chrissy pick ‘em out. That way, if it’s a dud, I can blame her! Otherwise, we read reviews or exchange recommendations with friends that have similar tastes. We are currently watching the HBO series The Pitt, about an hospital emergency room in Pittsburg; it’s intense with some humor thrown in.
In the interest of saving a little money, we are not against subscribing to, and then canceling a streaming service when we finish watching a series. What good is ‘cutting the cable’ if you have to maintain six or more streaming services to see what you like?
Dan, I do the same. If the movie interests me the fine, if I watch for 1/2 hr I don’t care for it I read. I am too frustrated with the number of B movies on streaming.
I sure agree, David. It’s not at all unusual for us to stop watching a movie after five or ten minutes. There’s lots of “b” content out there, and we can never get back the two or so hours wasted watching a bad flick.
Then it’s kind of funny, when we see a movie that looks interesting, and it turns out to be one of those that we axed two years prior.
Interesting—the kitchen hasn’t gotten any mentions.
I’m on a diet, Marilyn, I never say the K word. Actually, it’s in the third paragraph.
When our renovation is done, that might be my favorite. Right now it’s my LEAST favorite. (I had to cook our dinner in the ADU tonight because the ancient oven in the main house stopped working shortly after we moved in. Just won’t turn on. And I’m not going to spend $300 getting someone out when the whole thing’s going to be demolished in a couple months.)
Our new (old) home has a perfect space for a workout room. In our condo, we had three exercise machines crammed into corners of secondary bedrooms, and the anchor for the rower (to store it upright) was digging a hole into the wall. If I wanted to do strength work on a mat, I had to cram the mat between the guest room bed and the Peloton bike and crane my neck to look up at the bike screen.
Now, I have all three machines side by side and no need for vertical storage of the rower. I have a nice comfy oversized gymnastics mat for floor work and Pilates, and a nice smart TV mounted on the wall to stream workouts (or entertainment if I’m on the elliptical and bored).
The room also is equipped with solar tubes and has a slider to the outside so it has great natural light and I almost never have to turn a light on.
It’s become my happy place since we moved in!
That’s going to be fun to have Dana.
When we last had a home, I had a space set up in our small garage.
A row of kettlebells lived along one side. Pullup bar overhead, with gymnastics rings on it, and assorted other things on the wall. It had a mat in two pieces that would lean against the wall when not used, and be on the floor and connected in less than a minute. Oh and we parked our cars in there as well. Back out the car, put down the mat, boom. Second mat on the other side too when desired.
Not that it was my favorite room but I do miss it.
Dana, your workout room story is a bit like my VRP story. I had never had a dedicated space to listen to music. When I walked into the large loft in the model home, a light in my head instantly came on about my future favorite room. I also have a weight bench and some dumbbells in there for days when I don’t go to the gym.
Same. I walked into the open house at the home we bought and instantly identified the room as our home gym. It’s the perfect size and shape and it’s separate from the other bedrooms.
Dan, you might be disappointed with Falling Waters. It’s not in great shape and it is damp and smells musty. It looks very uncomfortable to live in. Admittedly though I am not a fan of FLW design.
I’ve just always liked those strange, modern designed homes, and had toured one FLW house in Springfield, OH. I have to agree they don’t look like the most comfortable of homes. We are looking forward to spending several peaceful days in the mountains. And no, I did not see anyone eating pets in Springfield🙀🐶
If you ever get to Wisconsin, check out the SC Johnson building in Racine. I believe the only corporate headquarters he designed. It’s still in use. Great tour!
Dan, definitely the sunroom for me, especially in winter — comfy leather couch, wood-burning stove, a good book. What more could you want?
That said, you skimmed over the bathroom, and I’m going to fight its corner. On occasion, when both my daughters and the grandkids are all in the house and it gets a bit frantic and loud, it’s a wonderful place of refuge — twenty minutes of peace before I have to go back to being jumped on by my grandson, or recounting to my granddaughter, in dramatic detail, for the thousandth time, the tale of how I got a bald spot when a scary lion licked my head…
So yeah… sunroom or bathroom 😉
Oh, I totally get the sunroom, Mark. My first real estate purchase after my divorce was a duplex in an area of Toledo known as Old Orchard. It sat on a rare double sized lot and had a beautiful all-season sunroom. I loved sitting out there on weekend mornings with the newspaper and a hot cuppa.
Of course, the coolest thing about that duplex was the next door neighbor, Chrissy.
And should I ever develop a bald spot, I’m stealing your scary lion story!
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