The Yurt

By Mike

Dec12012

The Yurt

About 8 years ago I came across an ad in the newspaper selling ‘authentic Mongolian yurts’.   Intrigued, I showed the ad to Molly.  It gets a little cramped in our 1,100 sf  home when we have visitors and a yurt sounded like it would make a perfect guesthouse for us.  ( A yurt is a large circular tent- about 300 square feet.  Nomads use them as their housing moving them as they follow their herds across the steppes of Asia.  They are actually called gers in Mongolia but we’ll stick with the term westerners are more familiar with.) » » »

Yurt Reborn!….slowly….in stages

By Mike

Jan292012

When we last left the yurt it was still standing but was decaying and in serious need of repair.  The outer weatherproof cover had deteriorated again and the smell of mildew was pervasive.  The mice were ransacking the interior and the flooring was starting to rot.  The yurt needed help and lots of it.  For a while (quite a while) we just let it sit while we considered a strategy to deal with all of the yurt’s needs.

The first step was to take it down before it deteriorated any further.  In the spring of 2008 Molly and I disassembled the yurt and packed it up.   Most of the platform and the outer covering went to the dump.  Now we just needed a home for the rest.  Storing a building sized tent as well as the furnishings inside of it was a challenge but we managed to shoehorn it all into our various other outbuildings.

Molly:  It was a sad day when we took it down.  It had been this thing of beauty and now it was…not.  

Mike: Yeah, one more face lift was not going to recapture her lost loveliness.  It was just going to make her look permanently surprised. » » »