A floor!!!

With a lot of help from Jeff, Matt, and Michael, thank you

Refinishing the doors

Yurt pickup

Friday we went to pick up our new yurt, at Rainier Yurt’s. The girls stayed with grandma, and Angi and I had a great day picking up part II of our dream of home. The Ryder truck was big, bumpy, and loud. Angi did a great job driving it.

If you have built castles in the air...

...your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them.

Progress with our first deck has gone really well; a lot has been learned, with a lot more learning to come. We’re getting close to a point where we will have material sitting on the deck we will not want to allow to get wet, which will mean there will have to be a big push towards getting the yurt up at a good pace.
The next steps will be finish up what little framing there is, complete the refinishing of the doors, attach the tongue and groove plywood, install the bamboo wood flooring, put up the yurt.

1000 sq ft of silver bubble wrap

The yurts are insulated with Reflective Insulation, which to my untrained eye looks a lot like bubble wrap covered in tin foil. Invented by NASA, I’ve been told works like a coffee thermos. Since we’re trusting our well being to its insulating abilities in our walls and ceiling, we thought to trust it to our floor. I found a manufacture online who sold it in 4'x125' ft rolls we need 655 sq ft, so this week we received our order of two rolls, 1000 sq ft of silver bubble wrap.

The Vision

Two yurts have been purchased, our first is on order and is currently being built by a local company called Rainier Yurts. The yurt is 21ft. in diameter, 338 square ft., with two doors and four windows, the walls are 7’x4” high with the center dome sitting at 13’. It will be ready for us to pick up May 21st.

Our second yurt was purchased two weeks ago from the Springmeyer family who had owned it for the past five years. It is a Pacific Yurt, a 25 year old company in Oregon. It is 20ft. in diameter, 314 square ft., with two doors and four windows. the walls are 6’ high with the center dome sitting at 10’.

The new yurt will be meant for our cooking and living room space, and the used yurt for sleeping, bathing, and toilet. Our vision is to set both yurts along side each other, eventually building a covered deck to connect them.

I have been trying to think of names for the yurts in part because yurt's make me think of sailboats, designed to be moved, with a pleasing wooden frame, surrounded by huge sheets of canvas, also because I dislike saying yurt 1 and yurt 2. Today I asked Angi if she liked Fajr and Isha. In honor of our good friend Jill who just recently departed to the East Coast. Fajr is the dawn prayer of Muslims, the first of five completed through out a day, which seems fitting with the new yurts use as our daytime space. Isha is the evening prayer, the last of the five, appropriate to the older yurts role as bedroom.

* A Jill story
Jill introduced herself to me one day when I was working at the espresso cart on Seattle University. She said “Excuse me but what’s your heritage? I said my mom’s Mexican and my dads of British decent. She said oh! I was just wondering what it took to make some one so damn cute” She never paid for a cup of coffee, and I had a wonderful friend for many years to come. Thank you Jill your very missed.

A what?

The first yurts have been traced back to the time of Genghis Khan. Marco Polo, observing the nomadic people of Mongolia, noticed their sturdy, exactly-round tents made of rods, covered with felt, which they carried with them on carts. Yurts (or gers, as they are called in Asia), are still used today throughout parts of Russia, Mongolia and Siberia.

The traditional yurt walls were made of slats lashed together with leather thongs to form a collapsible trellis or lattice. The lattice was set up in a circle and the door frame was lashed into place. The crown or center ring was set on two posts in the center of the yurt. Roof poles connected to the crown and rested on the top of the lattice, all the way around. Finally, the entire lattice is bound by a tension rope. Covers for yurts in Mongolia were constructed of felt, beaten soft by rolling and kicking the wet sheep fleece. The size of the flock ultimately dictating the size of the yurt. In cold climates, up to six layers were used for insulation.

As a modern structure, yurts are made using hi-tech materials. They are highly engineered and built for extreme weather conditions. And although it is true that they can be dismantled and moved, they are far from the nomadic structures of central Asia’s history. With many being built with elaborate decks, floors, interiors, kitchens, and bathrooms.

1st yurt arrival

Not exactly what Marco Polo saw as he witnessed yurts being transported in central Asia, but probably as close as you’ll get in 2008, in the Americas Pacific Northwest. Thank you John and Cindy

Chloe

"We're going to live in a Yurt, it's like a tent."

The Site

In September ('07) we decided to move forward with all the talk we had been doing about getting a yurt and putting it on my dad's property. We decided that the south side of the barn would be a good spot for us-close to a electricity and water source and slightly private.