Skip to main content

We got our CO!

 


We moved in 8 months ago! I can't believe how time has flown by. I do keep up with our instagram account but have let this blog and our youtube channel slide. If you like bite size updates come find us on instagram HERE or search up dometasticdome. I do promise to keep writing this blog and posting videos on youtube HERE. Since my last "push for the CO" post a lot has happened. Initially we were super busy doing all the final things on our check list to move in. Then we immediately turned to cleaning and beginning to move. Then all the unpacking and trying to make the house a bit more livable since we got the CO with only the bare minimum requirements to move in. Then we took a huge break because it has been a crazy amount of work to get to this point and we just needed one. In the fall we finally decided to try to start back up again but ended up with a bunch of big unexpected bills (unrelated to the house) that sent us into debt. We think will finally be able to buy materials and start back at it soon but it has been a quiet winter. 

As of today we have been living in the house for eight amazing months! That said, we moved in with the bare minimum requirements so we were not only unpacked into a very unfinished house but first moved in with a single partially finished bathroom. There will eventually be three bathrooms but we have a lot of work to do to get to that point. We installed the toilet in the kids bath before moving in but that was the only fully functioning thing in the bathroom. After move in, we focused on getting the shower and a bathroom sink working. More on those projects in a separate post.

We moved in with an almost functioning shower (we were missing a part for the hand held wand and the glass shower panel) and here starts what we are calling "the week of smashed glass".

First is a photo of the current state of our shower... notice the lack of our lovely glass shower panel and the hack way of hanging our curtain.

Our trusty seahorse shower curtain has been in the kids bathroom for a long time. It started out in our old house when the kids were really little then moved with us to the rental. It is now a stand in for our expensive glass shower panel that should have been installed. Installing the glass was #1 on the list of move in projects closely followed by installing the bathroom sink. We unwrapped the shower panel and Mr. Dometastic went to move it to the bathroom. Lets pause here to wonder WHY he didn't wait for help to move it. 

Turns out glass panels are many things:

  1. Heavy
  2. Awkward
  3. Breakable
  4. Sensitive to being put down on edge on concrete

Mr. Dometastic overestimated his ability to single handedly move the shower glass. He says it was hard to see the edge of transparent material in low light. We also think maybe one of the corners touched first. The result of his error in judgment is our cobbled together arrangement above. One 2x4, electrical wire and some conduit = Mr. Seahorse's new home until we can afford to buy another panel and it ends up on the important to do next list. 

The only positive part; he wasn't seriously injured thanks to the tempered glass. One second he was holding an 80" tall glass panel, it turned white, and then he was standing in a pile of sharp glass bits! No photos of the smashed state of the glass door and the colossal mess it made. We were too concerned with his bleeding wrist and kids/dogs getting cut to snap photos. It went everywhere up to a three foot height and about 10ft from where he was standing. Scrap building materials and our old seahorse shower curtain will have to do until we save up and it becomes important on the long list of projects still waiting out attention. Unfortunately we are at a stage of our build where we need to save for projects so we will have our trusty seahorse for awhile.

The week of smashed glass also included our new rescue dog booping several things into oblivion onto the very unforgiving concrete floor.

Here is her super cute innocent face! How can you blame her when she is still getting used to living in a house and uses her giant nose to poke at new things. Glass objects booped into oblivion = 3

Other than the very dramatic shower panel and our curious dog we also lost an additional two random glass objects to our new very hard floor in just the first week. So in our one week of smashing glass we broke 6 objects (everything from cups to lamps) and a huge shower panel! In the following months that number keeps creeping higher. Eight months in we are at a total of about 14. Hopefully we are done.

I will do a few other separate posts about all projects we completed in those final few days leading up to the CO inspection and then after we have moved in. If I put them all here it will be too long. I will just end this with some photos from the past 8 months of living in the dome. This winter has been spectacular with both sunrise and sunset photos. 









Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Radiant Heat and Drywall DONE!

  We are DONE with dry wall and everything is painted!!! It looks almost like a real house inside. I can top that news by saying WE HAVE HEAT!!! Lets take a moment to celebrate having a functioning heating system in a cold climate in the middle of winter! The marathon of drywall is done for now. We still have the master wing of the house to do after we move in but we would like to just pretend we are done for awhile. It was a long slow dusty process but it looks amazing. The flat walls are a cool white and the dome surface is a warm cream. All our color will come from materials not paint colors. We have plans for wood, metal and stone throughout the house. We are finally getting to install more lighting fixtures and finalize all the outlets and switches. To watch a five minute video walk through CLICK HERE . Greatroom floor outlet in the center of the room. We decided that since the room is 32' across it needed an outlet in the center where furniture would be. Kids bathroom sconces

Construction Video and Geodesic vs. Monolithic Domes

While we wait as patiently as possible for spring to dig holes for our new perc tests my posts will be directed towards general dome related things. Most people I talk to know what a dome home is but are clueless about the different types of domes. This post is to help show the differences between geodesic and monolithic domes with a few pictures of each. The saying "a picture is worth a thousand words" is true and a video must be worth 100000 words. (Watch a video of a monolithic dome being constructed at the end of this post to really wrap your mind around the process.) Many people have asked me how a monolithic dome is different than a geodesic dome. The answer can be quite simple. A monolithic dome structure is all one piece and geodesic domes are made up of many pieces (triangles) connected together. Monolithic domes are sprayed concrete like some inground pools. Here are some photos of interior and exterior monolithic domes. Compare the above Mon

Spider Tie System Stem Wall Forms Complete

We finished building the stem wall forms last weekend! Personally I think they look super cool and I will be a bit sad to deconstruct them after we pour them. So much work to build them only to take them apart again and then just bury the whole thing underground. The original plan was to pour the stem wall on Friday October 11th but our weather was once again not cooperating. We are got yet another rain storm fueled by a storm/hurricane that thankfully mostly missed us. Because of this storm we are now scheduled to pour it on Monday October 14th. This was quite the ambitious DIY project for us. I can understand why we couldn't even get a company to put in a bid. Part of me is amazed that we pulled it off...so far. The truth will be in how it holds up to the concrete. It took almost 3000 screws to put the plywood skin on the Spider Tie towers and we cut 120 sheets of plywood! We joked that we were the Dometastic saw mill. Watch some videos of the process. It is