the skin

finally - all the struts in.

that took some time because, umm..., i dropped the air gun from the scaffolding and it took a couple weeks to get fixed. during those 2 weeks, we gained a much greater appreciation for people who wield a hammer. wow - no wonder my brother has popeye arms, as did my dad and uncle. i never felt my dad's presence so much as i did in those days of hammering. more often laughing his head off at me for fumbling around.

the next step - putting on the plywood skin. the plywood is all cut in triangles - there are 60 each for the hexagons and pentagons. dave came over to help us out again and we hired another guy to help him on the scaffolding. we knew we would not be able to get up on top to nail the plywood on. as it turned out, there was more than enough for ed and me to do on ground - cutting the wood. we hardly were able to keep up with dave and juan, who turned out to be a fantastic help. not only could he keep up with dave but he had no problem whatsoever climbing around on the gridwork of the dome. we'll most likely hire him again when it's time to shingle. they did the top pentagon and the top halves of the hexagons. ed and i have been plugging away with the bottom halves but, with school started back up now, dome work is relegated to weekends.

now, it this cool, or what?!

git along, li'l doggie!

the out of square foundation created problems that we didn't foresee. since we had to tweak with angles of the riser walls, move them in or out from the edge of the edge of foundation, the load of the dome shell made the riser walls go out of plumb. oooh - not good. we called a structural engineer who suggested using come-alongs. come-alongs, hmmm... new one to us. after i found out more about a come-along i realized i knew what one is, just didn't know the name. i just kept thinking of the chorus of old cowboy song, "the last round-up." git along, li'l doggie, git along, git along.

why i even know that song is beyond me.

we know come-alongs quite well now. used 4 of them to get our riser walls in plumb. and then used one to pull a hexagon that was needing to get moved a bit, and then also a pentagon that got out of whack. once we realized how they could be used, they turned out to be great tools. my chorus is now "come along, li'l doggie, come along."

keeping the dome dry has proven to be another challenge. how do you put tarps over that, you ask? well, using a trick i saw the arborist use, ed threw a line with weights over the dome, attached a rope to that and then pulled the tarps up, overlapping at the top. it would have been so much easier had we one large tarp but we managed. we are quite anxious to get the shell shingled, though, so we don't have to mess with the tarps. because of one thing or another, we've had to do the tarping at least 4 times.

once was in the middle of the night. i had the (not-so) bright idea to duct tape the two overlapping tarps together and use them as one before we left for vacation. it would have worked out well had the tape held but, alas, it did not, as we found out when we got home from denver at 10:45pm. with heavy rain forecast the next day, we spent a few hours with flashlights in the middle of the night putting the tarps back on.

learning new toys

the weeks after the dome raising were perhaps even more challenging for us. we found out that the foundation was not only not in square but the opening lengths were not straight - they bowed out. one length was off 2". we needed to grind those down. so, off to camp davito (our pet name for dave's place) for a loaner grinder and lesson. it took us a week to get all the grinding done since it shook us up (literally) so much. my hands still feel the vibration of the grinder at times. and it was really hard on the ol' backs to bend over that much. that was one tool ed said he never wants the opportunity to use again.

since our embedded j-bolts followed the outside of the foundation and with the newly ground down edge were too close to the outside to use, we also had to grind those off and use anchor bolts to secure our sill plates. enter another toy that ed never wants the opportunity to use - a hammer drill. thankfully chris came to our rescue and did most of that. bless him - it was just 2 days before he, sheela and kaya moved (to bangladesh!) and they had tons more packing to do but he still took the time to help out.

a neighbor came by amazed at the progress - all the struts, all the angles, all the work. he was impressed. but i think was impressed him the most is that, with all the blood, sweat and tears we shed, ed and i are still talking to each other. if you want to test the strength of a marriage, build something together.

dome raising day 2

specs - the shape of the dome is a decagon with 5 sides being 6' wide (the riser walls) and 5 being 12' wide (the openings). the openings in our dome will all have either a window or door. it's approximately 30' across and 15' high. it will have 2 skylights, too.

the next day we continued on up. we tied the pentagons together with struts over the 5 openings and then started adding the lower half hexagon sections. at first it was just dave, ed and myself - and was difficult work. not only are ed and i a bit shorter and not as strong, but neither of us are exactly fond of heights. dave was very glad to see chris arrive. ed and i were then the ground crew - fine by us!

after the lower hexagon halves were up, the rest was put together strut by strut. it was a time-consuming process, but really very simple once we figured it out. think tinkertoys.

dome raising day 1

what we've all been waiting for...

a nice day, if a tad warm, good company and a buttload of work. what can I say? i'd like to say that it all went off without a hitch but i never was good at lying. we did get it all worked out eventually - actually, we're still getting it worked out but i'm getting ahead of myself.

brothers dave and andy were here as well as our friend chris. all that dog and baby-sitting paid off. i have to mention that all 3 of them are taller and stronger than ed and i are so their help was doubly appreciated. later in the day, nieces, sister-in-law, chris' wife and their little boy were here. that crew also helped.

getting the first riser wall up was a snap - until we realized how out of square our foundation is. we had to move walls, tweak them, mess with angles - in short, there was a lot of ummm... challenge that day.

but we got them all up and tied together with some bracing. then it was time to put pentagons on the risers. yes, it takes 5 people to put a pentagon up, although it looks like i'm not doing anything, doesn't it? by this time... whew. i was wishing i was the type that wants to go to the beach for vacation, not build something.

that's dave on the scaffolding, ed at the left, chris, andy and me. it's mostly dave's stuff - tools and equipment - that we're using. scaffolding, mega-sized drill, air nail gun, grinders, etc. he's got a lot of nifty toys. he calls our framing hammer a girly hammer and brings his own. but then, he could probably use a 10" sledge hammer to drive nails - he's got popeye arms.

the last pentagon up - we lost one helper by this time, gained a few more. sheela (chris' wife) and tessa (my oldest niece) are helping to stabilize that last pentagon. angela (my youngest niece) was our photographer and carolina (my sister-in-law) did kitchen duty. no small task for the hungry crowd.

prep

it was a kit, of sorts, that we bought from a guy in alabama. we got the plans, connector plates and templates to cut the wood. i opted for that since it was lots cheaper and i figured that, since i had been a picture framer, how hard could cutting wood be? it wasn't - there was just a lot of it. 160 struts, 1/2 dozen different angles/ends - 30 of this one, 35 of that one... i got a cool chop saw with $ saved.

yours truly cutting wood. it was HOT that week so i set the saw up under some trees. not a bad place to work.

after cutting the lengths, i took the wood to my brother's to use his band saw. the struts all need to be notched and using a band saw was the best way to do that. one morning i went out to find another place to stack the wood that was in my truck. right between the back porch steps and our heat pump was a just born fawn - and i mean just born. it was still wet and one eye hadn't opened all the way. i called ed out to take a look and then he called a wildlife place to find out what to do with it. we've got wildlife all around us but what did we know about new baby deer?

they told ed to just leave the fawn alone, that mama would come back for it or it would leave on its own. it was really tiny - smaller than my cats. we continued getting the wood out of my truck - although the stacking place was changed since baby was in it. within 20 minutes it was on its feet. talk about toothpick legs! he was probably about 18" tall. here's baby taking his first steps. and then he just slipped into the woods and was gone.

the foundation

early april
it took months to get the plans right and the permits (due to some royal screw-ups by people who should be responsible in their jobs - but that's another story). the day after we got the building permit, the concrete guys dug the footers for the foundation. it was kinda tricky since we'd had all those mega-size pine tree stumps and roots and they had to maneuver around a dogwood that we wanted to keep.

all last fall, winter and this early spring, north carolina was in a drought. perfect building time. but the day after the footers were dug, it rained. and rained. and rained some more. then we had a moat, not a footer. i pumped that moat out dozens of times - it took 2 months to get it dry enough by pumping, better weather and redigging it twice more. by the time they finally got down to dry enough subsoil, the footer was at least 3' deep in some places. that had to be backfilled with 20 ton of gravel and 2 dump truck loads of sand.

finally it was ready to pour. this is early june.

the slab - june 13

why a dome?

they are cool.

my dad built a round house back in the 60s and i always thought it was so cool. no corners - i like that. it gives the illusion of more open space. i'd love to live in one. our dome, however, is going to be a studio/workshop. maybe i can convince ed to do this again someday for a home - a dome home.

when we bought our house, we knew we wanted to build a studio/workshop. the design changed from a separate building to an addition and back to a separate building. and from a traditional rectangular pole-barn type construction to the dome.

the place where it would be built on our property changed, too. we eventually came back around to the same area that i had in my mind originally. the problem? trees - and a buttload of them.

what the back looked like before we started - probably october 2006









the logging operation - april 2007
we had a number of large loblolly pines cut down - they were close to 70' tall. they aren't pretty pines like in colorado - the bottom limbs are probably 25-30' off the ground so they are kind of funny looking. and because the wood is so soft, they are not exactly stable trees. they are the first to go in a bad storm and then they take the hardwoods with them. we still have many of them.

unfortunately we also had to cut some hardwoods when clearing the area. i felt bad about that. but they were pretty scrappy trees - didn't get much light with all the loblolly pines hogging the sunlight.

our friend chris is a tree guy. he doesn't think any tree is "scrappy." i told him that for every tree we cut down, i'd plant another. so far i'm still behind but i've planted a cherry i saved (that looks like charlie brown's christmas tree but is coming around!) and a variety of willows. the twisted willow especially will be very cool when grown. and i have a number of small oak trees in pots on the deck that chris planted. thanks chris.

getting started - with a blog, that is...

ok - i started. "about time," i imagine you more tech-savvy folk than i might be saying.

since my previous ramblings about our summer project that i sent to friends and family have basically been blogs, why not start one? a real one? well, time, for one. not knowing how, for another. and, last but not least, there was just always something about blogs that kept me from finding out more. i mean, who in their right mind would want to read about my life?

obviously more than i thought, since i had many requests for photos and stories of our dome progress. so, this blog is not exactly about my life - it's about our dome. it just happens to be a focal point in my life right now.