A Whimsical Dome House on Whidbey Island
My car rumbles along a dirt road as I head inland from the bay and through a densely grown woodland on the island. The smell of the sea mingles with road dust and the resinous musk of old fir trees. At the end of the road, a sharp turn down a gravel driveway reveals a clearing in the wood ahead. I can just make out the sight of a dome-top roof peeking from the canopy to enjoy a kiss from the mid-afternoon sun.
As I drive closer, the picture becomes clearer. The circular home perched high in the air emerges in full form. I instantly recall the whimsical Weasley house from my favorite childhood book, Harry Potter. It’s a particularly memorable home, full of life from the family that lives in it and enchanted with personality by its owner's charms. This home, I can tell, oozes magic too.
The home’s owners, Heide and Jerry, are the folks who graciously invited me to visit while on my journey to the coast for the Feast by Fire event. Heide has been following the blog and sent me an email one day sharing about her interests in gardening, foraging, and kitchen-crafting. She and I have a lot in common and so we became fast friends. When she shared with me her story about how her husband built their dome house over a 17 year timespan and about the children’s garden-to-table cookbook she wrote, I knew I had to meet both of them in person. And that’s how I came to be here - embracing them in their driveway, then sharing an afternoon spritzer and ham sandwich while I listened to home-building stories in their living room.
Their dome house sits amid 25 wooded acres on Whidbey island. Jerry broke ground in the 80's, without any prior building or construction experience. He relied fully on books: “How to Build a Woodframe House'', “Domebook 2”, and his subscription to “Fine Homebuilding”. His strong will and artistic skill, and the generosity of local tradesmen and friends donating their time and muscle were a significant help. Heide and Jerry built their home paycheck to paycheck, only taking on small pieces of each project when they had the means to purchase discounted materials or source free material to repurpose. Jerry built the block foundation then the self-supporting geodesic shell while he lived in a trailer on site. After a day of work at his full time job as a video producer and director, he’d go home and continue working late into the evening at the house. Within a few years he and Heide were able to move indoors while they spent the next decade finishing the interior and raising their son amidst home building projects.
Mind you, this house bears no obvious DIYers mark. Rather, Jerry and Heide took their time and pride in their work. Their beautiful craftsmanship is reflected in a myriad of unique details, from the cardinal tile compass in the entryway and the diamond shaped windows, to the solid structure of the home. Heide reflects back on the home building years saying that they didn’t have a lot of money, but they chose to give themselves time. With that type of wealth they built what they have now. Along with a beautiful home that they’ve owned outright they gained a myriad of valuable skills and lessons that continue to benefit their family. They found the means and plenty of joy along the way. (That’s a lesson I’m pocketing.)
The house features two bedrooms and three bathrooms, a music room, a half-moon-shaped kitchen, an adjoining office atop a walkout deck, a loft above the kitchen, a breakfast nook, and an expansive living room - all with tall curved walls and large windows offering a 360 degree view of the forest canopy. Every square foot of the home (that is difficult to measure) oozes with charm and the personal stories of their life. Tying the unique floor plan together (thanks to Jerry’s artistic ingenuity) are Heide’s whimsical touches of art and decor sourced from nature outings, motherhood activities, and a lifetime of travels.
Whether she knows it or not, Heide is a kitchen witch. She’s a master at concocting clever ways to infuse herbs and garden veggies into every dish imaginable. She’s often found developing fun veggie-based recipes in her kitchen, working in her office, tending the garden, foraging and crafting with wild plants, walking in the forest with their sweet schnauzer Dalai, or singing in their rock band. Her genius for crafting with food and engaging children is reflected in her cookbook: 4 Ways to Yummy. It’s an incredible interactive cookbook that introduces vegetables to kids in creative ways. It also helps them engage in the cooking process so they know at least 4 yummy ways to enjoy each vegetable. Thumbing through a few pages of Heide’s book makes me want to call up my nephews for an afternoon experimenting in the kitchen.
After the home and garden tour, we settled in the living room to relax a bit before dinner. Harvest Moon sounds on Jerry’s guitar while Heide harmonizes; the acoustics resonate well in the spacious room with concave walls. It’s a scene that’s familiar to me - one that’s often taking place in my own home with myself and my husband on slow afternoons. In fact, there’s much about my visit that strikes home with me. In some ways, spending the day with Heide and Jerry feels like looking into a crystal ball and seeing my future. Perhaps I’m under one of the house charms? My home with Rob will look a bit different and be filled with different objects of course, but we’ll be spending our time doing similar things. Rob will be strumming a tune on his guitar, and I’ll be crafting something in the kitchen with the latest garden harvest. We’ll laugh and recount stories of a beautiful life slowly threaded together with a resourceful hand, a clever intention, a creative eye, and of course a heart full of love for our family.
I joke about being charmed, but in all seriousness, seeing a tangible example of a home and life built by hand, slowly, unconventionally, and totally unique to one’s values, gives me hope for the dreams my husband and I work towards. Like Jerry and Heide, we don’t have money to go buy the life we want. (Even if we did, what we want can’t be found in any box store.) Time is on our side, and we're willing to build it. I can only hope that our land rewild project and the life we are cultivating will yield such spellbinding results.
