A guy's hide-out

Sometimes a man needs a cave of his own -- with a big-screen TV and a minifridge

Kyna Brookins was pretty excited about the building going up in her backyard. Several months earlier, she had asked husband Scott to build her a work shed. Nothing fancy, just a covered space where she could store her gardening tools, maybe do some potting. This 250-square-foot space she was looking at was three times what she was expecting. And it didn't just have a door, it had windows -- two! -- and looked like it would be fully wired.

"This is great," she said inspecting the work-in-progress.

Then she noticed a small, 4-foot-by-12 foot alcove walled off from the main room. "What's that?"

"That's your work shed," Scott answered.

Seemed the plan had changed. Kyna was going to get her work shed, but it would be a segmented portion of a larger, private sanctuary that Scott had been thinking about for a while now. It would be an addendum -- with separate entrance, of course -- to his man cave.

Now, according to Dr. Scott Haltzman, a Rhode Island psychiatrist and author of the just-released "Secrets of Happily Married Women," the appropriate response from Kyna would have been, "Good for you, dear. You need it. It's important for a man to have a place he can call his own."

And you know what? That's pretty much what Kyna said.

A very 2008 retreat

"Man cave" -- it sounds primitive. And it is, harking back to a time when walking upright meant you could get farther away from people, faster. But it's also very 2008, as an increasing number of guys are trying to carve out a space of their own in a home. Despite the adage that a man's house is his castle, it often has been the domain of a wife.

"Men often don't feel like they have a space in the household," Haltzman says. "I've heard countless stories of men who've had their posters and wall hangings systematically taken off the walls and replaced by impressionist paintings and other stuff.

"How many master bedrooms have lace throws over the bed or floral prints for bedspreads?" Haltzman asks. "What percentage of those do you think were picked out by guys?"

Batman had his Batcave; Superman, his Fortress of Solitude. Now, a mere mortal male can have his man cave.

There's a TV show about the retreats ("Man Caves," on the DIY cable network), and a recent poll by ServiceMagic.com (which matches remodeling-minded homeowners with contractors) found that 40 percent of respondents already had a man cave in their homes while 13 percent had one in the planning stages.

"It's something we're starting to see more of as the population gets older and the kids move out of the house," says John Sperath, president of Blue Ribbon Residential Construction in Raleigh.

Leon Shaw says his business, Audio Advice in Raleigh, also has seen increased man cave action.

"It might have a wine cellar and a cigar area, or a game area, or a pool table," he says. And it almost always has an entertainment center.

"The cool thing right now is a really good front projection home theater with good speakers," Shaw says. That alone could put a minimum $15,000 dent in your man cave budget. And that's not including the carpet or seats or soundproofing that goes with it.

Sperath says the whole shebang could easily run $40,000 to $70,000.

Tracing the primitive roots

At a time when houses are bigger than ever -- according to the National Association of Home Builders, the average house built in 2005 was 2,434 square feet, compared with 1,500 square feet in 1970 -- it seems there would be less need for retreat. With all that room, shouldn't a guy be able to find some space of his own?