As of this writing, we haven't yet chosen our site. So, what we write here is general, and may change slightly depending on where exactly we end up. We'll post an update as soon as we actually rent or buy a house. Here's what we're envisioning:

Outside: a garden in which we grow many of our own vegetables—to keep our food expenses down, provide ourselves with delicious organic produce, and to give Dreamers an opportunity to develop organic gardening skills. Space for people who want to undertake a project related to gardening—or maybe even  alternative building or permaculture, etc. And a place to sit outside on sunny days.

Work and study spaces: We'll use at least one room, but hopefully two or three rooms, as space for quiet study and work, and for occasional workshops. We'll stock these with 3 computers (maybe more as time goes by), worktables, a few armchairs.

Living room: We'll fill the living room with cozy sofas and arm chairs, pillows, hundreds of great books, and plants. This is where we'll eat our meals together, hold house meetings, hold larger workshops, and just hang out enjoying each others' company.

Kitchen: We’ll make our kitchen a clean, well-stocked, comfortable workshop for food projects—bread baking, dinner creating, tea drinking, cookbook browsing, salsa inventing, or fudge making.

Bathrooms: We'll start with a minimum of 2 bathrooms. During our first session, they'll probably just be regular one-toilet bathrooms, so we'll have to be patient while waiting and quick while using, but hopefully during that first session we'll be able to do some renovation work to add additional toilets, stalls, and showers.

Bedrooms: basically, we'll have one or two girls’ dorm rooms and one or two boys’ dorm rooms. Each will have bunkbeds, a shared closet, a full-length mirror, and for each person a small dresser with bookshelves on top and a couple coat hooks. You can bring posters to help decorate the walls, but we will also encourage you to use part of the wall near your bed as a "planning wall" to help keep you inspired and organized for your project. Houseparents will have a private room. Apprentices and interns will sleep in cots in one of the study spaces, or the living room, or somewhere else.

Resources: Among other things, the Dream House will serve as a resource center for its members. Of course, you'll want to think of the whole Bay Area as your oyster, but we hope you'll also benefit from the house's tools and books. For our first session, we'll provide

Each session, we'll spend $1000 or more on new resources. At the beginning of each session, members will decide how to spend $500 of this, and the other $500 will be allotted based on suggestions from past and present members, staff, parents, etc. Over time, we hope to accumulate cool stuff like good microscopes, lab equipment, a piano, drums, other musical instruments, Saxon math books, a videocamera, VCR, pottery wheel, sewing machine, a darkroom, etc. 

What we won't have: We may choose not to keep a TV at the Dream House--not because we think TV is “bad,” but because we know that for some people it creates a temptation to sit around in front of it instead of doing something more active.  It may be a moot point since we may not have the money to buy a TV anyway, at least not at first, but when we do consider buying a TV we'll poll members and prospective members to find out whether it's something they'd really want in the Dream House. If we do buy one, we won't keep it in the main living room, or if we do, we'll have restricted hours.