Category Archives: Dome News

Where I used to mention the dome we were trying to build.

Finally Some Damn Fine Weather!

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I have NO idea what I was doing last Wednesday & Thursday. Wednesday was probably a normal "SWMBO to the Office" day. No, she had to go in Tuesday so she was around Wednesday. And Thursday’s, since Smallville is off season, is pretty much just another regular day to me now. That’ll change when the next season comes on…

Last Friday SWMBO and I went out for Brunch. Then not much of anything until Battlestar Galactica. Damn Good Show!

Saturday, Sunday and Monday were DAMN FINE DAYS around here. Finally! I mean get naked and lay out nice! So I did. AFTER I cut up a lot of wood to start it drying out for winter burning. I cut up (by the end of the 3rd day) about 15 of my truckbed fulls of wood. It’s going to cost more in gas to transport it back to where we’re living than I’m saving in fuel costs. Meaning I could probably buy it from someone down the road cheaper. But I’m going to see if one of my friends will let me use his little dump truck to haul it back to the house.

OTT, not much going on. Since we’ve had to give up our dream of building a Monolithic Dome we’ve been working on the plans for a ’stick’ looking house. I figure we’ll use ICF construction but it will look like a normal stick house for the banks/loaning institutions. SWMBO still wants a mother-in-law apartment downstairs though. Bummer. But, hey, she’ll still be living there 20 years after I die so why not! I’d much prefer to go one-story without the MILA.

up01

This is my latest guesstimate for layout of upstairs… Still have to find a place for the circular stair & dumb waiter. And now SWMBO is talking about another door from the kitchen to outside…


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General BS Is All I Got…

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Got off my ass yesterday and borrowed my landlord’s splitter and split that pile of wood I had outside. Video’d the first part but didn’t notice that my battery was about dead so I didn’t get the second part. Bummer! That was when SWMBO came out to help me too… The video looks pretty funny as a time-lapse video.
Speaking of SWMBO, she’s caught a pretty good cold and is kind of out of it. Hope she gets better soon! Of course I’ll catch it. We’ve shared most everything over the last 25 years! :lol:



Playing with Poser 7

Not much else going on around here. Weather absolutely SUCKS. Even working up a sweat yesterday I had to wear my jacket liner.
Oh, it seems we’ve pretty much decided not to build our dome. The financing hurdle may have finally beat us. We’re going to see how this latest round of trying to get financing goes, and if it doesn’t, we’re seriously thinking of changing to a regular stick house. Well, knowing us and our dedication to at least trying to be environmentally friendly and building an efficient home, it won’t be a ’regular’ stick house. We’re already checking out ICF construction. Check out OurCoolHouse to see what I’d like to do if we can’t build a dome. I’d even steal these folk’s plans (with a couple of modifications for our property and where we want to build).

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Finally Got Out To The Property…

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But had to take the long "back" way to do it. Even had to go about 4 miles on a slippery wet dirt road. Got to the property and could not believe the amount of damage running water has done to the road and the dome hole! I am going to have to redo almost everything I’ve done to date. Damn! Took a lot of pictures of the property and the washed out Tahuya River Bridge and they are posted on my gallery site (link at right then under "Property Pictures"). There are washouts and "Runnel’s?" down the whole length of the road. The two catch basins I had to put in are full of mud. I mean FULL of mud. One you can hardly tell there was a hole there before the storm. Major water is still running out of the dome hole. I’m going to have to figure out and install a completely new drainage system with lots of gravel to try and direct the water to where it won’t do any harm. Hmmm…

Then I had to take the same way back that I went in on. Was kind of a nice drive really. Got home just in time to help the Plumber dig up the drainage pipe for our toilet so he could run a snake through it. The pipe was blocked by roots. Thank Goodness! If it had been blocked by something WE did we would have had to pay the $300 the job cost. But since it was blocked by roots the landlord was responsible for it. Phew!

Our new "Sleep Number" bed came by delivery today also. So after the Plumber left I got to drain and mostly disassemble our waterbed and install the Sleep Number bed into the frame. Only took a couple of hours. :grin: Hope it helps me get a better nights sleep! I’ve been sleeping on a waterbed for the last 30 years (or so) and this is really going to be different for me. I doubt it can be any worse than sleeping in the sand or on a concrete floor like we did in Desert Shield/Storm. :-P

Smallville was a rerun. Again!


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Phew!

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Just had a meeting with the contractors , Jeff & Ken. Phew! After going through almost anything you could think of for building a dome the total comes out to over $371k. Phew! I knew when we first started that $150k wasn’t going to be enough; but, damn! But when you stop and look at it, with the prices nowadays it’s really not that expensive. New stick homes (in our sizes) start at $250k around here. And that’s on a quarter-acre lot! If that! We got our 5.77 acres for just over $19k and the 5.1 acre property next door (unimproved. I mean Nothing on it! POSSIBLE Mt. Rainier view (in their wildest dreams!)) just went on the market for $150k.

So, the contractors are going to really finalize the numbers tomorrow then we’ll go for financing. The monthly payments are going to be a lot; but we’ll both work to pay it off as soon as we can. GOD, I NEED TO WIN THE MEGA-LOTTO!


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