Dometastic

I have talked about our first draft but I haven't shared it yet. We gave the designer a whopper of an email full of changes to make so it seems a bit silly to show you the draft that has so many changes needed. What I WILL share is the first draft sketch of the exterior of the house. This too has many changes that need to happen but it is not nearly as far from the end design as the first draft of the floor plan.  There are distinctly two reactions we get from sharing this drawing. The WOW that is super cool reaction and the polite non-reaction. Every time we get the non-reaction I hear the sound of crickets in my head and it makes me want to laugh. It is a bit like I am playing a movie sound track in my head. Cue "The Crickets". I completely understand the reaction. It more than qualifies as an unusual house and even the people that think it is cool wouldn't choose to build it. Building a round house is also going to pose many problems in our world set...

A post or 2 back I talked about getting window/door quotes. I am finally coming out the other side of wading thru a ton of quotes for the large 18 foot opening onto our deck. There are a bunch of companies out there that make big (either folding or sliding) doors for large openings. I contacted 9 or 10 companies. It is kinda a blur. I got back numbers ranging anywhere from $30k to $8k! Now that is quite the number spread! These numbers vary greatly depending on how it opens and what it is made of. Then there are screen systems, shipping and tax. Some estimates have packing and shipping charges as high as just under $3k! Some have no tax. Each company makes a door that functions a bit differently to add to the confusion. I have spent hours emailing and reading to try to figure out if we can incorporate this type of door into our design. Unfortunately our cold winters and hot summers here in CT require a thermally broken door. This is the same as saying it is insulated and doesn...

This past weekend we made a family trip to the Equine Affaire held at the Eastern States Expo. in MA. This is something I go to each year and normally I am just like everyone else. Just wandering around looking at all the stuff I can't afford and don't actually need. It was a marketing overload day where you walk out feeling exhausted even though you only walked around at a super slow pace. You are tired just because everywhere you look is plastered with marketing slogans and anything else they can think of to get you to stop at their booth. While not directly related to building our dome it was a helpful step in our process. Why?  Because the property will be a mini farm of sorts. Our 8.2 acres will be home to not only our dome but to a few horses and other critters. Our house site is at the back of a 4 acre hay field. It is a pretty long driveway and a long trench to dig for utilities! We think the best way to get the required power and water to build the dome is to build t...

I arrived home today to an email from the designer. The first draft of our house was sitting there in my inbox! Mr. Dometastic was the one who noticed it first and called me. "Did you see it?! Did you see it?!" Nope, I hadn't seen IT. I didn't even know what IT was. A very frustrating few minutes went by and I still didn't know what IT was. Finally after he gave me step by step instrutions that led to me turning on my computer I found out IT was an email. It is very much a first draft and at first glance I could see several things that needed to be changed. The back and forth communication has really finally begun. Now to start clarifying and making some decisions. Before we go back to the designer we need to iron out a few things. We sent her examples of the windows and doors we liked but nothing concrete. The next step is to really look into it because it impacts the augment (or bump out areas for the windows and doors) design. We need to actually pick out t...

One of the best things about building a house is all the decisions you get to make that aren't possible when you buy one. Renovating lets you make decisions too but not on the same scale as building. I think that is why we have been warned that this process will test our marriage. Every decision we have to make is also a possible disagreement. So far our biggest tension has been over windows. Everything from the number of them to their type and placement. Mr. Dometastic sees them as a weak point. This stems from those hoards of attacking neighbors. I see them as a needed functional and aesthetic feature. We have had some of the strangest conversations in regards to windows. Everything from looking up how much bullet proof glass would cost us.... to watching YouTube videos of people smashing glass blocks. Initially, just like our design reference house, we wanted a wall of windows in the great room with a 40% cut back.  With any luck our house will not look like a giant fish eat...