Dometastic

Ok, so maybe not a horror show but pretty freaking frustrating. It has only become funny now that I am done and writing about it. When I was on the phone with banks.... not so funny. I read about other peoples experiences trying to get money to build their unusual houses. Horror stories of people building "green" homes like the straw bale and sand bag earthship homes using just multiple credit cards as a way to borrow money. Why did they do it? Because banks wouldn't touch them with a 10 foot pole. They kept spread sheets and were constantly playing a shell game of moving debt around to reduce their interest rates, not ruin their credit and still manage to build their unusual homes. This was something we were absolutely NOT going to do. Then again, we are also using an established construction company (building since the early 1960's) and not just stacking found materials ourselves to make an earthship house. Honestly though.... its a good thing Mr. Dometastic has a

Grab your tinfoil hats and calculators folks and lets talk numbers.  I am NOT a numbers person but it is also hard to make me drink the cool-aide. Mr. Dometastic on the other hand is the opposite. He is a numbers guy and at times is a cool-aide guzzler. Between the two of us we should be able to navigate building this house and making it as "green" as possible without guzzling the cool-aid. At least that is what I am telling myself now. We are at the point of involving the building engineer and getting our official architectural plans drawn up. Time to really think about the internal workings of the house.  Ok, put on those shiny hats for just a moment. At first, our plan was to go completely off grid. This idea came about with Tesla releasing the Powerwall house battery. A battery linked to solar to charge it (and a propane generator as backup) would take care of our electric needs. Read about the Powerwall HERE. Ok, now off with the hats. The problem is the cost

The second draft is in! We still have more changes to make but it is getting closer to what we want. The main changes to this version are: Center domes are now taller than wing domes  We added a circular window and moved one to the main kitchen Redesign master shower a bit Master suite office is now clearly not a bedroom Redesign main kitchen island to include a connected extendable table  Redesign to add pocket doors (we still need to redesign to get rid of more swinging doors) Increase basement height to 10' (this allows us to drive a tractor in) Add people door next to garage door We may be crazy to want to live in an unfinished house but our plan is to do only as much as the town requires to get a Certificate of Occupancy (CO). We will then do the rest of the interior work ourselves. We may find ourselves living in a VERY open floor plan at first! We are also not new to living in construction zones. This was a renovation project from our first house th