I have a couple rooms in our house that are left entirely to me for the moment. I am getting the feeling that this is fairly uncommon. I am lucky that when I chose to move 200 miles to join my then-soon-to-be-wife she thought it would be a good idea for me to have my own space since my stuff would mostly be stored or tossed. So, I got a Den for my pipes (a room that is off the grid by being off of the central air system) complete with a sign that says Ben's Den. Then I somehow acquired a room in the basement where I converted a chest freezer into a beer chiller complete with taps. We added some homemade sausage hanging from the ceiling and some other food preservation things (cheese, sauerkraut, smoked peppers...) and somehow this became another one of my rooms. Well now it seems that the room in the basement has been noticed and a magazine is going to use it in a story about Man Caves. This has me wondering just how novel a room of your own is for guys these days. My wife has insisted that when we have #2, I'll need to give up my den and that the MiL wants to convert another room in the basement into a guest room, compressing things back into my cave. As I get a little defensive, I keep stepping back to realize that I have quite a lot compare to most. At least I think I do.<br><br>So how about it? Have you staked claim to any real estate within your castle? What makes it yours and would you give it up?

Can I come hang out with you? Wow. We don't have a lot of wiggle room here. I lost my office to the baby, although I may get more of the garage as a game room/office/drum room (it's already the workout room and we still pull one of the cars inside).<br><br>Really, can I come hang out with you? Sigh.

Since it was clear that I was not going to be able to maintain a full fledge man space in our house (we have no basement and no garage), I decided to buy a 10x20 shed for the backyard (the way these things are built and framed, they are actually more like miniature houses). Here, I assumed, I could safely store and organize my tools, supplies, and other manly deitrus.<br><br>In actuality, this space has now just become a dumping ground for stuff that my wife does not want in the kitchen or house, but still refuses to throw out. I am considering changing the locks on the shed and refusing to give dear wife the new keys.<br><br>Count your blessings.

My office is my castle, all the punk rock posters, skateboards, records, and offensive artwork are kept there, its MY room, the girls can have the whole rest of the house, but my office is mine, we're lucky to have that extra room and theres no threat of me losing it.<br><br>ANY house that we ever live in will have a man room, otherwise i might end up wearing pink and listening to michael bolton (shudders......)

In the house, I have a desk which is crammed in the room where the kids watch TV, so that doesn't qualify in any way. DadLabs HQ is pretty much a grungy mancave from stem to stern, so there's that. Way back when we were filming our DVDs, we shot them in the most amazing manhouse -- a buddy had converted his detached garage into a kitch-filled, bar and man-palace. I was green with envy every time we shot there. One of the first web videos we ever shot was with Sam Martin about his book Manspace. (The vid is so old, I couldn't even find it on our current site.)<br>

Thanks for sharing that video.<br><br>What's funny to me is that my spaces are some of the places I most often would least like to be. It's the hobbies that my wife can't stand to be around that make it necessary to have hidey holes. So I got the least desirable spaces in the house at least for now. That also means that I haven't thought about them as being something people would like to see. That leaves me with trying to straighten up and make some improvements to the spaces to make them photo-worthy.

The basement is entirely mine really. But it has 6' (or less in some places) ceilings and is jam packed with the junk that every household seems to gather... When it's straightened up, I have about 1/3 of it as a fairly cool workspace for various projects and crafts. The rest of the house is pretty much taken over by just furniture and daily living. While the paint and deco in some of the rooms is spouse-specific (office is my design, sun room is hers), they really aren't OUR rooms. The office has the baby crib (which is quite large) and the sun room has a large cat cage... So we're just livin'. In about 3 years, we'll find something new and bigger, and hopefully ONE main level. (I freakin' HATE running up and down the stairs. Drives me insane!)<br><br>So Ben... suck it up man. Enjoy it while you can. Be sure to frame up the magazine article for documentation of a time when your space mattered. With 2 kids, (and a MiL, yikes) I doubt you'll get much time to spend there anyway.

I used to have a foortress of solitude. Being a grown-up geek/nerd it had movie posters comic nook camera and computer space. Then I asked my wife to help me with the paperwork process. That was one of the best things I everdid for my business, but bad for the space. I have taken over a corner of my kid's area. We home school (by we I mean my wife with me occasionalty subbing) and I put my comics by their desks. That hasn't been a problem yet but since the youngest is becoming a great reader and superhero fan....(duh, duh, DUH! My gaming systems are spread out throughout the house. The Dreamcast & 360 are in the main living area. This alows me to go semi retro with the kids and newer with my Halo buddies. The XBox classic is down stairs in the office for when I have long image processes going. So basically I should pass this question on to the wife & kids as myspace is now the only place I can call my space.

My man space is the 10x10 storage locker I rent. And 1/3rd of it is my wife's stuff!<br><br>We live in a house that's too small, but the housing market isn't so great. But we'll eventually move and get a bigger house, in which I'm planning on having an office. As it is now, I literally have one table which I end up sharing, and a corner in the garage... I even park my car on the street so I can fit my motorcycle in the garage. That's it. Most of my stuff is still in storage (I got married a year ago). I'm am green with envy that you have two rooms.

Well, there was a crew in to document my cave yesterday. I must say that they were rather disappointed. I did warn them that it wasn't really what I'd call a Man Cave. They almost completely dismissed what they were interested in, the basement room with the keg converted freezer but took more interest in a room they said they wouldn't want to see, my smoking den. So most of the photos were of a room I hadn't bothered to clean up. I guess they're doing an issue devoted to men's topics and I'm the only guy in Fort Wayne (population 251,000, metro pop 570,000) that they could find who had anything of the sort.<br><br>I did get to send a bottle of a beer I brewed in February, Burning Goat Scrotum. It's something like 300,000 scoville. They took some great photos of my beer taps and sausages hanging above the beer fridge. Hopefully the article is posted online, although they haven't done that with many.

There are beers I won't drink because of taste... and now there's a beer I won't drink because of the name... Burning Goat Scrotum. Yikes!<br><br>So is that scrotum of the burning goat or burning scrotum (of the goat)…

It's based on a recipe called Goat Scrotum, so I guess it's just the scrotum that's burning. But if you tried it, it would seem like everything was burning. A half ounce of smoked habeneros will do that to a 5 gallon batch of beer. Now I know. (Well I've known since the day I brewed it, really.)

Ya know, Ft. Wayne has a great skatepark... and it's theoretically possible I'll roadtrip there again someday... I dig spicey, but if I get a chance to sample said brew, please, label it something different...

It's about a mile from our house, less if you take the bike trail. Not knowing much about them, I guess it's nice. I've seen the one in downtown Louisville that probably puts most to shame.<br><br>If you do come up, let me know.

The one in Louisville is my home park. Yea, it's kicka

Only a half once? That might tingle a little, hah! As long as it tasted better than goat scrotum I guess.<br><br>For my man cave I guess I have my basement office, which isn't bad. It's got all my computer junk, computer desk/chair, and a futon which is mostly storage. I have a little bit of the basement family room that stores my beer fridge and my MAME arcade cabinet.<br><br>I have 2 work benches that I made, one in the garage and one in the basement, but they have also become junk storage.

But there's only one way to tell if it taste better than goat scrotum... I'll take your word for it. HA!<br><br>I'm considering making an online challenge. You know, some people need others motivation to lose weight or whatever... I'm thinking about an online challenge to clean up your workspace... I wonder if anyone would be interested... gotta post up before and after pics... just an idea at this point.

We have a middle bedroom that serves as a home office (and also houses my clothes since we're terribly short on closet space in the Master Bedroom over at the 2Dolphins Resort & Spa). That room is strictly off-limits for our kiddo since that's where we've got computers, filing cabinets & other vital stuff that grubby little fingers could easy mangle, but I do still have to share it with my wife.<br><br>The backyard is my domain, but even then, my little guy is absolutely obsessed with helping me mow the grass with his little bubble mower, thus I'm never out there alone.<br><br>So, nope, I don't have a dedicated man space unless you count the bathroom - and that only works if I lock the door!

It seems like I get the whole outside, too. I'm a Master Gardener, so I suppose it's only fair. This gives me the freedom do things like synchronized holiday lights and a giant hops trellis.<br><br>My goodness, I'm a lucky man. (our yard is tiny, so mowing is easy)

I think I'm gonna have to get that Manspace book for my hubby for Christmas! He needs a space of his own SO BADLY!!! He's a computer geek, but unfortunately so am I. And since I'm the one who used to work out of the home professionally I claimed the den as my own when our house was first built. Now that wrangling 2 toddlers is my full time job I don't spend as much time on the computer, but I still haven't relinquished the den. And my poor hubby is camped out on the kitchen table with his laptop. It's really not a good arrangement. I keep saying for our next house we really need his AND hers dens... but that's probably many years down the road.<br><br>I'd LOVE it if my DH created one of those cool Manhouses in our back yard or something! But until then... I might have to give up my den.

I have longed for a room where I can lock out the world and do my writing. Soon the boys will move to the basement and their room will be converted into an office--for me. My wife has been talking about how it would make a neat little craft room for her and the kids to do projects. I'm sticking to my guns this time because I have big plans for this cave. However, with 5 kids, sometimes I find that it doesn't matter where I go in the house, they seem to find me and try to get me to break my own rule of not talking through a door. While a space is important to me, I have found that it's more about having time to myself, uninterrupted. If I can get a little of this each week, I don't care too much where it occurs. But I'm still not allowing that soon-to-be vacant bedroom to be desecrated with crafts!