Agent in the Creek

In years past, when a family decided to buy a house, men would hope to find a house with a shed or workshop in the backyard where they could escape the house to get some time alone. If they ended up with a house that didn’t have one, many men would build one to suit them.

Over time, men started taking over the garage. If the garage was big enough, they would build a workbench inside it, turn it into a weight room, set up a pool table, and/or display their trophies and deer heads there. Women would “let” their husbands have the garage; the house was their domain.

When the boys who grew up playing video games became men, they started looking to claim a space inside the home. Many grew up playing their games in a bonus room, or Finished Room Over the Garage (called FROG in the South), naturally they started looking for FROGs in the homes they were buying. They would refer to this room as the “man cave,” with visions of comfort and solitude dancing in their heads.

Today those men have kids who also play video games, and systems like Wii and PlayStation Kinect have reunited the family. Now that families are enjoying indoor recreation together, FROGs with their sloping ceilings are not always big enough to accommodate the equipment or the number of family members and friends using the room. Solution: the Media Room. Read the rest of this entry »