After a day of swimming with sharks, you’d think Bryan Bortman of North Riverside would want a break from the daily grind. But Bortman isn’t a corporate titan battling takeovers, he’s an aquarist at the Shedd Aquarium.
When he wants to get away from it all, he heads down to his own “water world”–in his basement–to relax in front of a 150-gallon, 6-foot-long, saltwater aquarium. Several kinds of angelfish–French, gray, queen and blue–as well as other fish thrive in this hidden suburban retreat.
“Saltwater fish are my love,” says Bortman, who feeds the sharks every Friday at the Shedd and takes care of the freshwater animals in the Amazon exhibit.
He’s not coy about his passion. Fishnets drape the walls. Fish mounts, 7-inch stingray barbs, piranha and shark jaws, driftwood and old buoys from the Bahamas decorate his retreat.
“It’s my vacation home; I don’t have to leave,” Bortman says.
Like Bortman, an increasing number of homeowners are bringing their passions home, creating their own play spaces for everything from wine collecting to meditation. Call it what you will–a hobby room, an exercise room, a study, a workshop–but many of today’s homeowners want a room in which they can retreat, unwind and do their own thing.
“Many of our clients are out and about all the time and want some sort of dedicated, private space where they can do things their own way on their own time,” says Charles Grode, vice president and owner, BGD&C, a Chicago-based, custom design/build firm. “All of our clients request something in this vein–it’s actually becoming a standard option.”
Part of the reason such requests have evolved into a standard is that more houses have room to spare. In the last 30 years, American families have grown smaller (from 3.1 to 2.69 people) while houses have gotten bigger (from 1,500 square feet to 2,330 square feet), according to the National Association of Home Builders in Washington.
“People used to buy homes simply to meet functional or living needs, such as cooking, sleeping and eating,” says Gopal Ahluwalia, NAHB’s vice president of research. “Today, they are using homes to meet lifestyle needs–now the kitchen needs to be big enough for entertaining, there is a dedicated media room for the oversized TV and possibly other rooms for whatever hobby interests the family.”
Several times a week you can find Peter Jones hanging upside down from his basement ceiling or crawling across an adjoining vertical wall. “Think of how a fly navigates the wall and ceiling,” says Jones, of Deerfield. “That’s me.”
Jones, an avid mountain climber for 12 years, built an indoor climbing wall and cave in his basement in 2002 to keep his strength and skills ready for outdoor climbs across the world.
“Climbing is not a sport, it’s an addiction,” says Jones. “And I’m a climber who lives in a very flat land.”
To build his climbing cave, Jones, who has a background in engineering, spent about $600 on materials and did the labor himself. Made of plywood, the cave features an overhanging climbable roof with two panels, one of which drops from the ceiling at 45 degrees and another at 20 degrees. There also is a vertical traversing panel on the back wall. The structure is approximately 7 feet tall, 20 feet wide and 8 feet deep at the cave.
“Anyone with basic carpentry skills and training, and a little imagination could build this,” Jones says.
What makes the wall climbable is the fact that it has about 300 to 400 removable epoxy “holds,” knobs, handles and a variety of misshapen objects, in different shapes, sizes and colors for hands and feet to grasp.
“Vary the size and position of these holds and you create an easy or hard route, allowing you to train at any level,” Jones says. “Wall climbing, like real mountain climbing, requires physical strength and dexterity, because it’s all you.”
Ahluwalia says the trend toward creating distinctive play spaces or escape rooms tends to be across the board, not exclusively for high-end houses.
But finding the space can have its challenges, designers acknowledge. Plenty of people live in places that don’t have much of any extra room, let alone an entire spare room. And for a specialty room to feel like a satisfying retreat, ideally “you want a good amount of space,” says Katharine Roe, an interior architect and designer who owns her own firm in Chicago.
“Nobody wants to walk into a shoebox and spend their free time,” explains Roe.
Today’s trend toward open-floor plans only adds to the challenge. “Open-floor plans are great for keeping an eye on the kids or for entertaining,” Roe says. “But people are realizing if they want to get anything done without distraction or noise, they need another space to go away to. They want the best of both worlds.”
Not that four walls and a door are a requisite to creating a unique play space, says Roe. She’s currently designing a video-game room in the second-story loft area of a contemporary home. The owners originally envisioned the area “as a getaway space for lounging, but they just don’t have the time,” she says.
Sheri and Stuart Levine have devoted the entire third floor of their Highland Park home to their retreat–an exercise room. The area includes a StairMaster, two treadmills, an elliptical trainer, a multistation circuit machine, free weights, a stability ball, a professional gymnastic mat and yoga equipment.
Sheri says having a workout area in her home is a timesaver.
“It makes it easier to run the household and fit a workout into my schedule by just going upstairs.”
But the space also is a place to unwind. It includes a reclining massage chair and an adjoining wet-steam room. The room is wired with surround-sound stereo and a TV equipped with DVD and a VCR. Sheri says she and her husband often tape television programs and watch them during their workouts–a strategy that gives them more family time at night.
“It’s one of the rooms we enjoy most in the house and it gets put to the most use,” says Sheri.
More collectors, too, are bringing their hobbies home by incorporating them into their living space. A wine collector for nearly 10 years, Jim Lewis has a healthy perspective on his hobby.
“Nobody collects wine for convenience,” says the Lincoln Park resident. “It’s just that same kind of craziness like people have who collect coins or sports memorabilia.”
Lewis has given his self-described “craziness” a well-appointed and ample space to flourish in the form of a 2,100-bottle wine cellar. In 2002, he took over a portion of his basement–including blacking out three windows–and installed a 150-square-foot room dedicated to wine.
With floor-to-ceiling redwood racks, redwood paneling lining the walls behind them and a slate floor, Lewis’ cellar is also climate controlled for temperature and humidity. The space is mostly for storing wine, but it’s also big enough for taste tests.
“There is also a display space for certain bottles that I’m particularly proud of, where the bottle is presented on its side so you can see the label,” he says.
Lewis and his wife, who together had a similar but smaller space in a previous apartment in New York, use the cellar often whether dining alone or hosting a dinner party. Although Lewis just sold his home, he “absolutely” plans on building another wine cellar in his new house.
“This one was better than the last and the next one will be better than this,” he said. “I learn something new every time.”
