Creating a Dungeon in Your Home

Creating a Dungeon in Your Home

By Bernie Roehl

In this issue, we’re going to take a look at how to turn a room in your home into a private playspace, a dungeon of your own where you and your partner can explore your fantasies. We’re going to look at some of the reasons you may want to do this, as well as the logistics and some practical issues you’ll have to deal with.

Why a Dungeon?

There are several reasons why you might want to create a dungeon space. If you have kids, the day will eventually come when little Johnnie or little Janey let their natural curiousity get the better of them and they decide to start exploring mommy’s nightstand or daddy’s underwear drawer, or find out what’s under their parents’ bed. When they find the blindfolds, cuffs and floggers, they may have some interesting questions for you. By storing all your toys in a separate locked room, you keep them away from prying eyes.

Another reason for having a separate room is to accommodate some of the larger pieces of bondage furniture you may eventually acquire. While some people have done a remarkably good job of disguising a St. Andrews Cross as a coffee table, or a spanking bench as a place to store their collection of exotic plants, it’s still a nuisance to have to re-configure things every time you have friends or relatives drop by.

The third reason for building a dungeon has nothing to do with keeping things secret, and everything to do with creating a special place to play. Very few people have the luxury of living a D/s lifestyle on a 24/7 basis. Housework, family life and the countless distractions that occupy our time prevent us from being Dominant and submissive all the time. It’s therefore not unusual for couples to set up specific circumstances in which their D/s relationship is nurtured and reinforced. Those circumstances can include having a physically separate space for your scenes.

It’s important not to underestimate the importance of this separate space. Closing the dungeon door is a way of shutting out the vanilla world, of taking you away from everyday things and into a special little place of your own where one of you is Master and the is slave. In time, you may find that the simple act of entering the room will put both you and your partner in an appropriate frame of mind, and that your play is heightened and focused as a result.

Choosing a Space

Right about now you’re probably thinking “this all sounds great, but I don’t have room for a dungeon”. You’d be surprised! A lot of people think they need some enormous room with arched stone ceilings in order to be able to create a dungeon. The fact is that a small room can work just as well, and is certainly better than no room at all.

A spare bedroom can work as a dungeon, and so can a small storage room in the basement. If you have a full-sized attic, you’re all set! A garage is another option, though it’s likely to be more difficult to seal off from the outside world. Some people have used a large garden shed, though that works best if you don’t have nosy neighbours.

If necessary, you can have a room do double-duty as both a dungeon and a guest room or study or what have you. You still need to be able to conceal the toys and furnishings, but at least you don’t have to deal with it every time someone drops by the house.

If you’re living in an apartment, things are much more difficult. Space is at a premium, so giving up any of it may not be an appealing option. However, finding someone in your area who does have a house may give you at least part-time access to a dungeon in exchange for some help in setting it up and stocking it with equipment.

No matter what space you choose, you’ll have to set aside some time to take out whatever is filling it right now in order to make room for the things you need to bring in.

Security

Once you’ve chosen a space, the next step is to think about ways of making it secure. A locked door is obviously the first step, but where do you keep the key? If it’s hanging in an obvious place, your kids or your parents may still give in to curiousity one afternoon and decide to check out what’s behind the mysterious locked door. There’s something to be said for carrying it with you, or for using a combination lock.

If the room has exterior windows, you need to think about how to block them off. Curtains may keep people from seeing in, but what about sound? One solution is to take carpet fragments and place them over the windows, with some dense material (old clothes work well) between the glass and the carpeting. This will not only prevent people from peering in or listening for sounds, it will also block out the daylight and give you complete control over the lighting in the room.

Depending on your living arrangements, you might also want to consider at least some minimal soundproofing in the room itself. Again, carpet fragments can come to the rescue – they deaden the sound and can help prevent it from being heard outside the room.

Setting the Mood

Now that you’ve got the space cleaned out and made secure, the next step is to create an appropriate mood. Talk with your partner and discuss some of your shared concepts about what kind of playspace you want. Whether you call it a “dungeon” or not isn’t important, what matters is how you both conceive of the space. Remember – there’s nothing that says a dungeon has to be cold and dark, unless that’s what “works” for both of you. It can be a warm room, inviting intimacy and passion, or a stark, cold, somewhat menacing space where anything can happen. It can be a small classroom, complete with chalkboard, school desk and dunce cap. It can be a clinical setting, with white walls and an examination table. And of course, it can be a classic dungeon with manacles on the walls and chains hanging from the ceiling. It’s all up to you.

Once you’ve chosen a mood, you need to figure out how to set the scene. You can find props and bits of furniture at garage sales (possibly from other kinky folk in your neighbourhood!), or by shopping at local flea markets or vintage clothing/furniture stores. If you’re going for a classic dungeon look, you can get chain and various types of wall mountings at your local Canadian Tire. You can paint the walls gray if you choose, or get some “faux” stone wall facings. A few candleholders on the wall (or electric candles, like those you sometimes find on Christmas trees) can really enhance the mood. Even adding a dimmer switch to control the room lighting can make a big difference.

If the room is naturally cold, and that’s not the experience you want for your submissive, you should invest in an electric space heater. Pre-heat the room for an hour or so before starting to play, and be sure to turn off the heater and take it out of the room so neither of you bump into it during your scene.

Specific Examples

In order to give you some ideas on how to approach setting up a dungeon, let’s consider some specific examples.

Example 1 – A basement room

Let’s say you have a small room in your basement. You want a fairly bare-bones dungeon, nothing fancy. You start by putting a few boards along the wall with eyebolts in them for hanging your toys. Since the room has exposed beams, you add some hooks from which you can suspend bars or lengths of chain. Your spanking horse is the centerpiece of the room, and is kept there between sessions. You can always move it out of the way (and out of the room, if necessary) in order to provide additional space. A floor heater can be brought in if the room gets too cold in the winter, and since it’s a basement room, it never gets too hot in the summer. Some cardboard boxes full of old clothes and newspapers can be stacked floor-to-ceiling, both for sound insulation and to block off the small ground-level window.

Example 2 – An attic

Say you have an attic. You clear out the cobwebs and remove most of the junk you have stored there, relocating it to the back of the garage. The exposed beams allow you to set up a suspension harness, and a trunk over the hatch prevents people from wandering upstairs while a scene is in progress. Mounting a few lights at floor level produces an eerie effect, especially with the sloped roof and the beams casting shadows. By the time you and your partner ascend into the rafters, you’re both in the mood for some serious play.

Example 3 – A shed

Let’s say you live out in the country. You buy a garden shed (the largest you can find) and set it up some distance from the house. Your “tools” hang from hooks on the inside, and while there may not be enough room to swing a cat, there’s plenty of room for paddles and riding crops and nipple clamps and other fiendish devices. And of course, taking your partner “out to the woodshed” has a nice ring to it. The longer the walk, the more your partner can contemplate what will happen to them once they get there.

Example 4 – A garage

The kids have left the nest, and you find you no longer need two cars – let alone a two-car garage. You decide to leave the Toyota in the driveway and turn the garage into a large dungeon space, with a St Andrew’s Cross, a spanking bench and a full suspension rig. Everything disassembles, so when you have the kids back for the holidays you once again have a garage for them to park their cars in.

Example 5 – A storage locker

You live in a high-rise, but you do have a large storage locker in the basement of the building that you’re not using. Adding a few eyebolts and chains is a piece of cake, and you now have a place the two of you can retreat to for some intimate play. You may want to avoid using it during moving season, though!

Example 6 – The great outdoors

You have a large property, backing onto a ravine. No neighbours around, and the kids are gone all day long during the school year. You don’t have a room in the house you can use, but you do have a fence, a tree, and some posts that you run the clothes line from. You already have a dungeon! Attaching your submissive to a fence just requires some cuffs and some quicklinks. Running some rope over the tree branches (testing them first to make sure they can take the weight of someone struggling) is easy enough to do. And those clothes-line posts are the next best thing to a St. Andrews Cross.

Where to Go From Here

As the examples above illustrate, the main thing is to be creative. Don’t make assumptions about how much space you need, or what kind of atmosphere you need to create. Instead, look at what you have available and imagine ways of using that space to create a “dungeon” for you and your partner (or partners) to explore your deepest, darkest fantasies.

As always, if you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please feel free to contact me by email (broehl@ehbc.ca).

Next month we’re going to shift away from “how to” articles, and look at finding a partner who has interests that match your own. See you then!