Honestly, the Lotion Pit is better interior decorating than modern “is it a home or the surface of the sun oh my god everything is so bland and white” interior design.
I’m old enough to remember 70s design still being normal and life just felt way cooler.
OK, Biff Tanner
I had a house with something like the first one, although it had a railing installed.
At first I hated the railing and considered removing it. Then I slipped on the hardwood steps on my way down into the pit. A whole 20 inches doesn’t seem like a lot, but let me tell you that hitting my ass halfway down was enough to make me re-think all of it.
Aesthetically, conversation pits are amazing. That said, they are absolutely built to fuck up someone’s day the very moment they’re not being careful.
yeah i’m in the stage of life we gotta think about hoyer lifts and i am not getting one of those down and then up outta a conversation pit
Yeah, that’s my first thought. Kinda cool, but I could see stepping off an edge and going down hard on a table or something. I wouldn’t even care if it was me, I fall down all the time, but I’d be concerned about others, like my wife, or my mom, or my son.
or my son.
I kid you not, when the realtor showed the house they brought their rambunctious 7-year-old with them. Kiddo wasted zero time and did a running full-gainer into the conversation pit, tucked into a roll on landing, and sprawled out flat to stop in the middle of the room. Realtor/mom was NOT amused. Frankly, I was impressed but also relieved that there was no staged furniture in that particular room.
I hosted a few house-parties over the years and always had to keep a watchful eye on guest’s alcohol intake and all the steps and railings. It was kind of exhausting.
Against the advice of literally every person we talked to (with the main argument being ‘resellability’) our new home is being built with one!
Fuck it man if you’re staying there for 30+ years who gives a shit about resale value. Do what you want.
I love this. For the past few years I’ve fully embraced the whole “our house is for us, not the next buyer” mentality and not making good choices for the next owners is great.
I don’t give a shit if other people don’t like my paint colors, it isn’t their wall!
If they don’t like the paint, they can repaint. If they don’t like the conversation pit, they can remodel… which is gonna be more expensive but I have to imagine if you’re buying a house with a conversation pit you’re probably pretty well off already.
I hope you don’t plan on living there when you’re older and need mobility aids!
But genuinely, I’m sure it’s gonna look cool AF.
couldn’t a ramp be installed?
The plan is def a forever home! If I can’t make a step or two the whole house will be a wash, lmao
Usually a conversation pit is avoidable, as seen in the pictures. Shouldn’t be enough to render the whole house unusable
Could you not just preemptively have a plan in place to cover it up? Like “okay if we are going to sell we just drop in a floor on top and pretend it wasn’t there”?
If I get old and have to move out, it’s their problem - I think by then it will have come full circle and be in vogue again.
I feel like I remember somebody saying they tend to cause flooding or water damage? Like I guess the foundation can separate and water seeps in? I could be completely misremembering that though.
We used to put indoor koi ponds in houses too.
From the pit standpoint, you could excavate the whole thing, put a sump in then build it two-level.
There’s always a way, it’s just not usually cheap.
Wer’e on the top of the hill and the foundation is pier and beam, off the ground - we’re gucci!
I know it’s a shitpost, but…
As cool as they might look, imagine trying to keep those things clean. Just constant vacuuming.
This is why all the materials should be waterproof and a drain should be placed in the center of the pit. Then you can just pressure wash the whole thing
Then you get conversation drain flies
Not if you don’t have dirty stagnant water.
I, too, have tried to convince my partner to make it an orgy pit.
I like to think of more as a containment zone.
Sooooo, you’re saying shag carpeting all over?
Even copious amounts of (definitely not human) blood?
it puts the wood paneling on its walls or else it gets the economic recession again
The concept behind this design is really fascinating and actually harkens back to very very old house design, like 1500s, where people would have a little cubby with benches next to a fire.
Read about Frank Lloyd Wright and his first few house designs (i think the Fallingwater house is a key one) to get the bigger picture on this. He (in ~1910 i think) literally brought back an element of domestic architecture we’d left behind. Comfort pits from the 70s are downstream of this, in my opinion.
Fallingwater is very interesting, visited as a teenager, with no concept of anything, especially fluid dynamics, but I had seen how heavy snowfall led to heavy river rise that flooded my home and fucked up my life. And i had a vague idea that we all understand, which is that water always wins. So when I saw the interior of Fallingwater, I was like, this shit is not a place humans could live.
Tl:dr fallingwater is leaky and damp
I also saw Falling Water as a teen. I was in awe … of the fact that an artist could actually have the name “Lipchitz”.
Mine would look like the bridge from Star Trek.
I love this idea, but wait which bridge?
Like DS9 where everyone is all over place and shouting to be heard? Like NX01 and TOS where everyone is facing away from each other and have to spin around to make eye contact because the cap likes to look at the backs of people’s heads? Like DISC where everyone is spread so far apart (like they have cooties) and away from the captain that she can’t even remember who’s on duty and everyone but the helms women and the cap have to stand the whole time? Like VOY and TNG where everyone has assigned seats and can actually see the TV (view screen)?
“It puts the lotion on its skin”
A place to moisturize
I fucking love late 60s to mid 70s architecture. Not so much the colors, tho. Rust orange, brown, and vomit green aren’t very cool.
I can definitely see why people dislike the colors but there’s something about the 70s (I prefer to think of it as avocado) green paired with wooden mid century mod decor. It just gives me cozy vibes for some reason
Totally agree that there are combinations that jive within that framework.
all of them look like a great way to break your ankle in the dark
Dawg I don’t think any of us could figure out how to drop a floor on a slab for cheap so we could manage it. Would be hella lit tho
Raise the floor around where you want the pit
that’s some move the mountain to us top drawer shit right there
“It put’s the lotion on its skin” pit aside, a fair bit of that stepped layout has some correlation with the higher rate of swinger or “key parties” that took place from the late 50’s into the 70’s. A fuck pit, if you will. Bring 2 buckets.
