LUXURY DOME HOME built for $200k is like a nature hotel

Hi there, welcome to my channel where I take you on tours of unique homes and creative spaces. In this week's episode, we're traveling to Tennessee to take a tour of one family's dome home that's unlike any other. This spherical home is actually two stories and features an incredible outdoor living area, a detached sauna, and a beautiful view that will make you feel like you are high up in the trees. The owners are going to take us on a tour, explain why they chose to build a dome home, and talk about the challenges of fitting modern amenities into a space that resembles a snow globe. But before we get started, if you like videos like this, make sure that you subscribe and hit that notification bell because that's the only way you're going to know the next time that we publish a unique home tour. Hi, I'm Sam. I'm April. And welcome to Solisphere. He kind of pitched it to me with getting land first and building something different than a normal house. What's a place where people can go reconnect, unwind, and get back to being themselves? This has been almost a three-year journey to completion. We had a contractor in the beginning, so he took care of a lot of the permitting, lots of challenges building the place. Probably the biggest would be the fact that it's a circle. Even though it is round, you still are limited on space. We did have a framer in the beginning that did a lot of the walls, so that helped out a lot. But ended up doing a lot of the work in the end, so we had to learn a lot along the way. And a lot of it was like, hey, you're going to be a plumber today. And I don't have any experience with that, so I had to learn that. You're going to be an electrician today. So we learned, and it worked out in the end. This is our deck. It's 35 by 55, I believe. The main point is I wanted it to have a big hangout area, so you can do all the stuff you want to do outside, grill out, just have a good time hanging out with your friends. And over here we got the grill, our Ninja wood fire grill. It's also our oven, so if you want to come up here and do your Thanksgiving turkey or something for the holidays, you can do it in that thing. This is the Pellet patio heater. You get about a foot and a half flame length right inside that glass door, so it sets kind of a good ambiance. Even if you're not really trying to heat the area, you can still sit around a fire. We cut down a few trees out here, and I hated doing that. When they were cutting all the trees down, I said, hey, can we keep this one incorporated into the deck? It's just nice having it right here. Often in the mornings we'll sit right here, and we'll take two chairs and put one on each side and just look at the water, look off the deck, and just have your coffee. Right now, it's the middle of summer. All the leaves came in, but in the fall, it is a complete view of the lake right there. Okay, so this is the sauna. We got it from Seattle as a kit. It's a Redwood Outdoor product. It's an amenity that you don't just get everywhere. I mean, a lot of places have hot tubs, not everybody's got a sauna. We can go inside and check it out, but it's got two benches, the heater right there in the middle, and then right here is your water. You fill up your bowl, you can dump water on top of the rocks, and it steams it out for you real nice. The panoramic window, so you can see, it's like you're just sitting in the trees, so that's what we wanted. We don't even have, you can see that there's not even railing in front of the window, so it's almost like you're looking over the edge, and that's what I love about it. Now that you all have seen the outside, come on inside. The goal behind putting this dome together was really just, like, you see a tent, you're not sure what to expect, but being able to come in and, like, you kind of see the inside of your home in a tent, and it's kind of like, oh my gosh, this is so crazy. So that's really what we wanted when people first walk in, is the, like, there's stairs, there's a living room, there's a TV, there's a kitchen. Like, we're kind of, like, at home, and that was our goal, and that's the initial shock we want from everybody. So initially when it came to designing the layout, we just had the idea we wanted a space for someone to sleep, have a closed door, have a private bathroom, also if they have guests to have an upstairs. Now when it came to the coloring, we had an idea planned, and it was kind of like whitewash walls with the trimming. When we saw the whitewash, it didn't really go how we wanted it. That's kind of where we went to changing it to a green. I love it. Clean, simple, probably the best decision we've made in this place, because it really just, the calming of the walls when you first walk in is amazing, and we are so happy with it. So over here, we have an amazing record player. I grew up with listening to vinyl, and my husband and I were like, we have to have this. I went and dug through my mom's old records, even have gone to yard sales, consignment places, and have able to find some really cool records. So you know, if you don't want to have a radio, and you kind of want to go old school, this will give you all of that. All right, well now let's go check out one of my favorite spaces, the bathroom. Now this space was a little hard to kind of come up with what we came up with. I told my husband, we really got to knock this out of the ballpark, because you know, I want somebody to kind of feel that luxury feeling when they're, of course, on vacation. We went ahead and added kind of a corner shower with see-through glass, as well as a wonderful water feature, which is my favorite, because you literally feel like you're in a waterfall. It's so peaceful, so amazing. Now to move on to the toilet. So back to the kind of like being modern, high-techy and stuff, we went ahead and decided to get a motion sensor toilet. I'm a girl who needs really good LED lighting, so I told my husband, I was like, we have to get one of those mirrors. If you're like me, and you're gonna say go out to dinner, you still want to look your best, you still want to have good lighting, put your makeup on, and this is the mirror for it. And to go along with that, we have a floating sink. It's so cool and different, and that's what we really wanted to go for. All right, so now let's check out the bedroom. Here is our king-size master bedroom. We, of course, are limited on space when it comes to framing. It kind of encloses a little more, but we were like, we are going to get a king-size bed, because comfort's everything for us. If you're kind of like me sometimes, to where I like natural light, but sometimes I really just need a really good dark room to really get good sleep, you gotta have a door. So this barn door that my husband built, all on his own, covers the entirety of the room. I want to take you upstairs to the loft, but before we do that, we really need to kind of talk about these stairs. These aren't just like any original stairs that you probably see. They kind of have that floating feel, and that's kind of what we were going for. We found these on, I believe, Lowe's, and what really caught our attention is that they're adjustable. You can kind of adjust it to your space, which is huge, because sometimes stairs, they come as is. Welcome to the loft area. This is a wonderful space that we were not sure about doing, but when we figured out that the dome was 16 foot tall, we were just, it would be silly if we didn't utilize the space above. So we came up with the idea of a loft. We have a queen-size bed. The you can come here with your spouse, which is wonderful, a wonderful getaway, but you can also have it as a girl's trip or another couple friend that you guys can really hang out, spend time together, and there's a place for them to sleep as well. From here, it's an amazing view. Like you just, you can't beat this view when you wake up in the morning. Okay, so welcome to our kitchen. We wanted everybody to really feel like they're at home when they're here, so we went all out for the kitchen. This is kind of my baby, so that's why I'm talking about it. This is a custom-made countertop that I had a pretty big hand in. We went to a local sawmill, but it's local Tennessee rainbow poplar, and I'd never seen a countertop made like that, so I kind of was just like, we got to do it. I love doing a lot of woodworking things, and I knew all the crazy colors and stuff that it had in it, so I knew when we put it together, it would hopefully look something like it turned out, so very happy about that. We wanted to have a bar top. You have the bar top stools where you can all hang out and sit. We didn't want you to feel like you were lacking in any area, so we went and got this modern Samsung. It's the color-changing panel one. I'm sure you've seen it. Big French doors. Plenty of storage for whatever brewskis you would like to bring with you. We got a microwave. We got every cooking appliance you could use. One of the only things we probably don't have is an oven, just because we know cooking in a dome, there's not a whole lot of ventilation, so we didn't want to have a smoke hazard and the fire detectors going off all the time. We wanted a really different looking kind of cabinet, so I wanted it to be open. I always loved to show friends when I was a kid, and I remember part of Monica's kitchen cabinet situations, they were open and they had the plates where you could see them and stuff, so I wanted to build one like that. Found a cool looking one on YouTube, so I copied that, and then when you're done preparing in the kitchen, you head over here to our dining table. We wanted to have it next to the window, so while you're sitting here, you get the great view. It's round. I wanted that, you know, if you want to get the guys out here and have like poker night or something like that, you know, that's what you can do. We got all kind of board games you can play. It's just a great place to eat. I like being here more than I like being in my house. It just feels like you're in something more comfortable. It's like a snow globe, right? It's magical feeling, and the huge window, just being able to look out at nature, it just, it's so peaceful, so calming. I love it. The feeling you get because it is different. Thanks for watching this week's video. I hope you guys enjoyed it. Please make sure to like, share, and subscribe, and if you'd like to see more alternative home tours, check out the playlist we have linked in the description, and I will see you soon with another unique home tour.