[Zeke]

What is a man cave? I see workshops here and separate rooms, plus just an area off to the side. What is the criteria? Do you have to have a TV and/or stereo and a couch? Maybe a bar?

I've been through a dozen iterations. I have one outbuilding attached to the garage that was a real man cave for the first owner of the house, 1940 thru 1960's. No cigar smoking in the house so he retreated to the paneled and otherwise finished out original one car garage. He had an old radio out there as well. The big door is now French doors and there is a 3/4 bath in the laundry right next to it.

I have stayed in the room for up to a week when there were family members staying with us. It's almost an ADU but no kitchen. My wife has more or less conceded the space although she has a doll collection out here (yes, my main desktop is here) and her mom's old spinet piano. There is a sound system, actually two. One stereo for music and one simple sound system for the TV. Lots of comfortable furniture and a juke box. There are shelves and a bookcase and there are mementos galore, the kind that don't fit so well in the house. Same goes for posters that don't seem conducive to the house decor. Think of your teenage bedroom.

That has to be a man cave and no work is done there. That is the difference here between the workshop/garage complete with sounds, posters and collectable antique tools, but where work is done. That's where the working tools and machines are.

So what is a man cave? You work there or not? If it's a corner of a large shop, I assume you don't work there, just relax. Or is it a garage void of any visible means of tools and supplies all sanitized with a wall of cabinets and a shiny floor? Maybe some vanity signage.

If you want to get right down to it, my bedroom is as much of a man cave as anything you've seen. There is not one shared or feminine thing in there. I have my dad's old walnut dresser and secretary where he did his homework. It's all Pendleton wool blankets and western theme landscape framed art. Pseudo Ralph Lauren: Leather, wood and wool done very retro. Old 1930 to WWII radios but no TV.