Hearthwood Dome

Incredible. We were hoping to get the dome primed in the entire 3-day Memorial Day weekend. We managed to get it done in one day.

Given that Jean and her parents painted some this past week, we still managed quite a feat.

Painting with precision takes a lot longer than with primer.

This past weekend we accomplished a significant bit of painting, but that certainly wasn't the only day we worked on the dome. Jean and her parents have been painting since last Thursday...and Jean is still painting. Not actively, mind you, but she gets over to the dome for a couple hours at a time during her day this week.

This past week has been thrilling!

Jean installed our vinyl tile flooring in the laundry room on Thursday and I took Friday off to work on the house. Jean painted the remainder of the cumulus in the dome while I completed wiring the circuit breakers in the panel box.

I then began chipping and scraping drywall putty from the outlet boxes around the kitchen.

Shortly thereafter, I installed our first permanent outlet to the refrigerator circuit - and it worked! I installed another half a dozen outlets, making the kitchen begin to look like what it will be.

I took the day off on Wednesday to work at Hearthwood.

In the morning, Jean drove over with Lucas, while I went to Home Depot for supplies. I needed some 8-2 wire, a 60 amp cutoff box and a 40-amp, 240 volt circuit breaker, all for the AC unit outside. I also picked up some 2x4's for constructing the island around the oven and double-sided cabinet unit.

This past weekend was pretty fast-moving. The weather was completely outstanding, allowing us to be productive both indoors and out.

Last week, Jean and her dad had picked up our countertops from IKEA. We decided to go with joined wood blocks rather than Corian or SileStone for two reasons: time and money. The Corian would have been around $2500 installed and at least two weeks away. For those of you who are brave enough to ask, you know we're shooting for an early July move-in date, so this wouldn't work.

We'd already investigated the IKEA bit, like the look, so went with it. The whole set cost around $250!

So Saturday morning we measured, crossed our fingers and cut the countertops at Bob and Kathy's. We had our sinks (prep and kitchen) on hand, so cut the holes for them as well.

Check out out: The US Postal Service will be issuing Buckminster Fulller stamps celebrating the 50th anniversary of Bucky's patent of the Geodesic Dome.

Release date is July 12.

This past weekend I took Friday off in order to work on Hearthwood, making it a wonderful 3-day weekend! The weather was nearly perfect the whole time.

On Friday Bob began the railing on the landing while Jean and I continued wiring outlets and lights.