Although "great room" concepts have come back into vogue, some people still like having the extra space living rooms provide. If you don't wish to display your living room as a beautiful, but pickled display of uncomfortable furniture, lamps and pictures, then why not try something different? A baby grand piano with a simple upholstered occasional chair and ottoman, and a good lamp is an elegant, inviting, yet useful way to use a formal living room, even if you are not the quintessential musician.

If your living room can be closed off from the house by adding a wall and double or French doors, many living rooms are also in a great location for a home office. One buyer from England that I once sold a home to even added a raised hearth fireplace to make the (now-large) home office more cozy while he worked.

Some Baby Boomers I know rebelled against formal living rooms by selling all their formal living room furniture and replacing it with a pool table, decorating the living room with framed football jerseys and Lucite-encased sports headline clips on the back wall. Depending on the location of your living room, this is a great use for an otherwise wasted space in some homeowners' estimations. Builders can add a hanging light fixture over the table itself, and provide recessed, dimmable lighting all around. Add a wet bar, and - voila -- a veritable haven for entertaining, and you haven't even invaded the family room yet.

Garage stalls that get used for workshops, play areas, home gyms, or finished rooms are not new to the conversion/option scene with homebuilders. Be careful, however, in eliminating indoor car parking area if your new neighborhood has strict rules about driveway or street parking, as many now do. Try to keep as many stalls free as you own cars for. Your neighbors will appreciate it, and your home value may someday gain from it if everyone plays by the rules.

It's good to know that homebuyers need not "box" themselves into the same old uses their parents had for every room in the house. Using some suggestions from their builders' design center personnel, collecting and studying architectural and home decorating magazines, and touring upscale model homes can give homebuyers ideas for practical, but perhaps more unconventional uses for rooms that would smell just as sweet by any other name. The new American home can become whatever you make it, from the smallest starter home to the move-up variety. Giving buyers as much choice as possible is what homebuilders strive for, to satisfy the diverse new uses of the American home, making every one of them as individual as the people that occupy them.