Renovated Geodesic Dome House, an Unforgettable Experience!

[Music] i'm mike and i'm denise and we're super hosts of our airbnb dome sweet dome as an architect this was very interesting for me because it's a geodesic dome which are you know unique and different and there's not a ton of them around and and we just kind of appreciate to be able to share that with others and so this uh was built as a cabin in 1970 by a university of oregon professor at the time and they put together and they they actually built it themselves uh with the geodesic you know kind of a kit we moved into the neighborhood in 2001 when we bought a house down the street and lived here and raised our kids and then we've known the owner of this um who had purchased it in 1980 from that same college professor who also lives in the neighborhood and he knows that i'm an architect and so he thought i would appreciate it so we we bought it with one of the agreements is that we could not tear it down for 10 years because it is sitting on a beautiful piece of property next to dollar houses so we determine that's fine we will turn it into an airbnb and so we purchased it in in september 2018 did a remodel of it because it was quite interesting at that time it had five a series of five bunk beds all the way up to the ceiling up here and and so we kind of cleaned it up and simplified it i think also you know you do meet a lot of interesting people yeah which is also and you get a lot of people are very excited and just you know very happy they were to experience this and they relate it to you and so that's kind of cool because you meet different people from all over the world and staying here so you know meeting people is also kind of part of it so welcome this is our 750 square foot dome suite dome and we're gonna go do a tour come on in [Music] so this is our entry area and what's really nice about this space is it kind of acts as a buffer between the entrance and into the actual dome you know obviously having snow shoes here a lot of people bring their skis snowboards bikes their dirty boots from climbing all day or something like that and they have just an easy place to just drop everything they want and then be able to go ahead and enter the dome so when you first enter the dome we look forward to our guests getting this amazing first impression of the transparency that leads up to the second floor and you can look right out the windows you can look at the entire ceiling of the dome and really be able to bring in everything that this is all about and we go into the next room this room is what i call the den this is the area where maybe when you first walk in you throw down your luggage and part of it is where you'll find you know our manual we also have a nice little map everybody gets to make a little pin on where they came from and it's no surprise that we have people from all over the country there's a few states we don't have anybody yet but you know hopefully the pins will keep coming and we'll get be getting people from almost every state and that's kind of like what our goal is this room also allows another person to sleep in it if they wish to if two people are sleeping in separate beds so we set it up so that it's not necessarily a twin bed but more of a day bed so it has a multi-function use you know somebody might want to come down here and just cozy up with a book where this is a little bit of a a quieter darker room uh separate from like where all the big windows are and yet can still function as a bed [Music] we're trying to retire you know just finding other little things to do on the side so hosting a short-term rental just a change from working in an office there's definitely financial benefits to having a short-term rental instead of a long-term without a doubt [Applause] to me the the biggest deal about having it as a short-term rental was that people will come maybe every two to three days and have an experience here it's like a bucket list you know moment for guests to you know have the opportunity to stay here instead of having somebody come here and stay for longer terms and that was kind of the exciting part about it is that you know it's like they'll never forget the moment you know they'll never forget those two or three days so here we're entering into the master bedroom and i would probably say this is my favorite room uh because being able to lay here and look out at the view look at the sky you know it could be snowing it could just be the sun coming up just such a beautiful place to kind of wake up in the morning we kind of made this so that the bed can actually be moved that was a really important thing for me is that the headboard is detached from the bed and if somebody wanted to push it up against the windows and lay there that's totally fine with me and then we just added some really nice little touches in regards to kind of keeping it really quaint and yeah just giving it that really cabin yet romantic feel the room next to me right now leads in towards the bathroom but it's a place where many of the guests can go and hang up their clothes there's a uh a hanging area and a double stack washer and just a easy place to put some of their personal items so this is the bathroom and obviously working with a shape that's unusual we have two different areas that in a sense allows there to be a little bit of privacy for when you're using the sink as opposed to when you're using the toilet and the shower in the behind the wall here one of the items that we definitely expanded on was the shower area by having such an enclosed area we went ahead and added a four foot basin so that an a surrounded glass so that it feels a lot bigger and there's a lot more room for even two people and i think that that's something that you typically wouldn't expect to see like in a smaller space and especially like in a cabin but then there were also other things that we thought shouldn't be touchable such as the original sink it still brings back the character of when this place was first built you know would have been easy to modernize that but we just thought that it functions perfectly how it is and i'm so glad that we didn't change that out and instead we just put again another cart for people to be able to put their belongings and of course a space below for towels [Music] the structure's called a geodesic dome which is made up of series of triangles the concept was was through buck mr fooler back in the way the 40s and 30s i believe it is and so it's a series of triangles that are put together and bolted together and start and work their way all the way up to create this this dome which is a self-supporting structure and that's hence why the the floor is floating because it doesn't have the structural integrity to hold the floor up so the floor is fraying from the ground up and that's also part of the reason you don't have the structure touching the walls which also works with the airflow to help the air flow through the building to make it more comfortable and stuff it's just the uniqueness of it and a lot of people are surprised how big it actually is when they they come into it you know obviously if you were building from scratch you'd probably do a lot of things differently in in this but it is kind of what it is which creates its charm um and stuff you know with the the canvas walls and you know you've got these angled windows which of course most people know windows aren't supposed to be at an angle so trying to keep them watertight is a challenge there's a little uniqueness and character that bring to the place and it's just like the rock above the fireplace you know we started out you know we were looking to tear that off and it was like no i think that's kind of part of the character of it so we basically went around in a full circle and now we're gonna head on upstairs so when you're coming up the stairs we're heading into the kitchenette area much of this was pretty much designed very similar to what you might find in a tiny house many of the appliance companies have been making smaller appliances so we obviously took advantage of that by putting in things that take smaller footprints such as a smaller size 18-inch dishwasher obviously a smaller refrigerator and then even something where we're just putting a tabletop two burner stove so that it could be taken off if nobody's using it and allows them more space on the counter or they can leave it as is this up here was an addition and the problem was all the windows in this entire place none of them were operable when you did cook even boiling water basically it had nowhere to go so we went ahead and framed in this window and then just created a square operable one had a little fun working on adding a little bit of a backsplash that added a little bit of boldness for a room that is very simple and then of course just like the rest of the dome where we don't have any cabinets so that nothing can get hidden we left the open shelves so that people can just grab a glass and sit down and have a glass of wine or whatever they're gonna do [Music] one of the things that we also went ahead and just recently added maybe a couple months ago was um this little cart you know we've we listened to our guests and one of them mentioned that when they come in they don't have a place to throw their groceries so here right behind me is basically what everybody comes here for and it's these amazing windows that are just part of the design of this dome and they just look out to these amazing trees and this beautiful sky that we have here in bend and you can see these from anywhere on the second floor you do get the summer sun that comes in here pretty strongly our first thought was how do we cover them without taking away the view of the windows and everything so we had to kind of come up with our own kind of solution so obviously it makes most sense to have your little eating area right here and i would imagine that every single person who stays here probably sits here for a very long time maybe they work right here with their laptops and just take in this amazing view i would definitely say that this is this is what it's all about right here yeah we're right now where we're sitting we're probably 30 feet above the ground you just don't feel that when you come in because you come in at grade and you come up the stairs and here you are and you know you're looking out over the trees and over these other houses and stuff like that so you don't really feel you're surrounded by houses so you get that privacy really quickly and the treehouse effect so now we're moving into the living room area one of the first things that we did was we replaced the wood burning stove with a gas stove we had to bring in the gas from the street we found something that you know added a little bit of pop to the room and it also serves as our primary heat for the whole dome as my husband explained earlier that with the floating floor the heat or the air flow because of the ceiling fan allows there's this constant continuous circulation so what people don't realize is that this heat is actually heating downstairs because it just goes down the size of the walls into the first floor the toughest part well the more methodical part i should say was trying to integrate new furniture that looked like it could come from 40 or 50 years ago and granted some of these pieces that obviously i i found in um you know garage sales or whatever that probably are as old as that you know blending them in with the luxuries that people are expecting such as a brand new comfortable couch so an interesting thing that i think about when i'm in here cleaning is i actually enjoy cleaning this place because like in fact i probably take longer than i should to clean it because i'm really enjoying my time in here cleaning and whoever says that they enjoy cleaning i mean you know the two hours or so that i spend in here cleaning uh getting ready for the next guest is like it's so enjoyable it could be raining and it's so relaxing in here like while you're cleaning or you know it could be beautiful and sunny and i open the windows and i'm cleaning and it's actually fun it's just such a beautiful space and i can never get tired of coming here just to prepare it for our next guest it's kind of cool so here we are outside and we've gone through quite a few touches for our guests to enjoy out here as well as some safety touches we've used quite a lot of solar lighting so that in the evenings because we don't really have that light that you get in the city it's extremely dark here at night when you first park and you walk down a small little trail here is some adirondack chairs a few cut pieces of tree trunk and then of course you know just a nice little fireplace that in the evenings is used quite often we have a lot of guests who love to come out here ben tends to be a little cool in the evenings with our high altitude so they enjoy this being you know just an extended part of the dome into the outdoors aside from this area we have two decks we have an upper and a lower deck and each of them go around the two different sides of the dome and as i mentioned the dome is literally sits on a hillside so that's the one of the reasons why there's two different levels one actually is kind of a dining area has a your typical patio tables and chairs for eating dinner and enjoying a view from the what would be the west side and then we have a lower deck that kind of is tucked underneath the the actual dome and it's more of a lounging area that just has a couple adirondack chairs and a hammock brings a little bit more privacy as well so so there's multiple options depending on what kind of outdoor experience you want so down here on the bottom deck aside from having a place for you to kind of tuck away underneath the dome because technically you are underneath the dome a lot of this was basically built right into the raw crop that exists on the hillside here as you can see there was once a trapdoor that was the main entrance when this was first built in 1970 and uh right there is the trap door so back when this was originally built and probably went on for about a good 10 20 years we want to say that was the entrance to this whole dome was through this trapdoor right here using kind of like a pull-down ladder we're in bend oregon and what's so beautiful about bend oregon is that it has four solid seasons during the summer it's got it's a unique experience during the winter with the snow because the snow will cover up most of the windows you'll see some light but it's obviously filtered through the snow just the experience of the dome then and then of course the fall and the spring are obviously unique too so there's guests that come in one season and then they can't wait to come in the complete opposite season just to get a different feel for the dome a lot of times when i come into the dome after they leave my fir my favorite thing to do is go right to the guest book and see what they wrote and sometimes it's very inspiring and it makes me know like what we're doing is pretty cool because a lot of the responses are just really really great and every one of them like keep promising to come back and and i guess that means that we're doing things right so yeah that's pretty cool thank you for watching our video and for stopping by tiny house expedition i'm alexis and i'm christian don't forget to like comment and subscribe and for more tiny home tours and stories click the videos below and join us on patreon for bonus content including face-to-face conversations with us we hope to see you there all right thanks guys have a good one

Channel: Tiny House Expedition

Views: 73,420

Keywords: geodesic dome, dome, geodesic, geodome, dome home, geodome house, geodesic dome house, small home, dome house tour, dome house design, tiny house tour, geodesic dome home, geodesic dome construction, geodome treehouse, airbnb unique stays, tiny house airbnb, living big in a tiny house, airbnbpartner, tiny getaway, geo dome cabin, geo dome, geo dome home, geo dome tour, geodesic dome cabin, dome life, tiny getaway cabin, unique stays, unique airbnbs, geodesic dome tour

Id: nZB13IlOCNo

Length: 20min 30sec (1230 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 30 2021