Ready for Staining

Summer time will soon be leaving us, but today was gorgeous none the less!  Today is my second day off, and the only day off that I have with Sarah, so naturally we went to a barn sale for some things we could use in the yurt, did a few things around the house, like watering the garden and some chores, then we went to the wood shop and worked on the yurt. This is the first time Sarah has seen the lumber or any of the progress, she was pleased, as pleased as a cat lady can be. You know the type...

Anyways, the yurt lattice pieces that have been cut (60 of 180) have all been chamfered and Sarah stained a few of them.

After about 10 pieces, she decided she was done working and retired to the pond cabana to do some reading and writing. Life was tough.

Work, Work, and more work!

Since the wood arrived, I have been working like a maniac. Going to actual work, then driving to East Albany, working till well after dark, then driving home and going to bed. Today was no different, except that I actually had all day to work on the yurt, also known as a day off.  Dave and Kathy, my amazing friends who have opened up their home, shop, and refrigerator to me, were getting ready to leave for a long weekend of reunion extravaganzas! Luckily for me, not so luckily for them, Dave is always willing to lend a hand, give some ideas, and put his fingers at risk on the table saw. So here's what I have been up to:

First I took seven of the the 2" x 10" x 16' and cut them in half to make fourteen 2" x 10" x 8'

They are much easier to manage at 8' rather than the full length. Then we cut off a sliver on the sides to clean them of any waning or warping that could be easily taken off. It also cleaned up the wood for the end results.

 As easy as it is to take 7 boards and make 14, it is always gratifying to see the finished pile waiting for the next step.

After that, we cut the fourteen 2" x 10" x 8' into forty-two 2" x 3" X 8'

Ta-da!

I am awful at estimating how long things will take. So I always have high goals of finishing many steps in a few hours, only to find out that I could only finish one step. This was no different. I had ambitions of having them drilled and ready for more cutting by the end f the night. Little did I know that it would take me much longer before I could ever get there.

here is the stack at about 10:00pm. I am pooped and ready to go home!

In order to keep things tidy, we stacked them on the trailer. As you can see, it was certainly dark.

The next two days I spent planing the board (shaving them down) I was knee deep in shavings, with shavings in my nose, ears, and every inch of my clothing. I may have even lost some hearing in the process. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of the shaving pile, but Dave made a shaving bonfire to make more room for the shavings to come....

Fast forward to today... I was finally able to start drilling! Yay! Woohoo!

Oh wait... it gets boring

Drilling hole after hole, and adjusting for warp and twist, then drilling some more. 

Our quick and dirty jig to help keep the board straight 

The manufacturing line

Hell yeah! The finished pile! 

Next step: Rounding the ends

We set up another jig on the porch to keep the boards aligned and to simplify the process so I wouldn't have to round each one individually. This is neccessary to keep the fabric from getting caught on the edges and tearing. I used a plunge router with a 1/2" drill bit. Ideally a 3/4" would have been best, but you work with what you have.

All lined up and ready for work

I would round off one end, then move the boards down to the other side of the jig and round the other side, then flip them over and repeat the process until all four sides were complete.

This is what they looked like after rounding them.

If we had a 3/4" bit for the router, it would have made the bottom more circular with no flat spot.

Finally, the moment I have been waiting for.

The lattice finally looks... well like a lattice!

We still have many more board to cut into the lattice pieces, this is only about 60 of the 180 that will comprise the wall.

Then for some aesthetic touches, I will be chamfering the edges to soften them. This is going to take me approximately one million years.

Then I am sanding the rough spots. this will also take me one million years

and at some point, they will be stained with a tung oil mixture

Here are some lessons I learned the hard way:

1. Don't walk around the wood shop barefoot or you will get splinters and metal in your foot

2. Don't handle wood without gloves or you will get splinters

3. Don't look at the wood wrong, or you will get splinters

4. When adjusting the roller saw-horse things, don't let go of the adjustable part or it will slam down on your thumb and hurt.

5. Prepare an ice bag for when you get home, you will need it.

All in all, things are coming along quite nicely. I am, despite my above comments, okay and in good spirit. The progress is slow but steady, at least from my perspective. Thus far I have spent 22 hours working on the yurt, with many more to go. 

The Lumber is here

Yesterday I met the sawyer at my friend David's house, to stack and examine the wood we ordered for the khana (walls) and rafters. It feels like we are finally making a big step forward simply by having some of the supplies. My plan is to start coming over to the shop after work and start on the khana. Seven of the boards were already dry and ready, which is coincidentally just the number of boards I need for the walls. The rest have been stickered and stacked until I'm ready to begin the rafters. The rafters will be pretty simple since I am more or less just cutting the board in half to make a 1.5" X 4.5" X 16'.

The nitty gritty of the information is that we bought 34- 2" X 10" X 16' boards. Seven of them will be used for the walls, the remaining 26 will be used to make the 52 rafters, and there is one extra board just in case anything happens. Each board cost us $14.68 plus tax and a delivery fee of $25 for a total of $555.07

I also had the opportunity to go by my friend Wendy's land, to try and help her find a spot for a shallow well. She has graciously offered her land for us to stay on, although we have yet to decide if we can make it happen since she lives in the opposite direction of our jobs. We were however able to find a spot that had some standing water and some orange bacteria. The orange bacteria is present when iron is available in the water. It is also commonly present where de-oxygenated water flows into an aerobic area. This could mean that the water is coming from a  source underground and when it reaches the surfaces the bacteria is able to colonize. This is all theoretical at the moment since I only dug a small hole to see how the water was behaving. It appeared to be flowing in the hole, albeit not as quickly as I would like. I am hoping that a deeper hole will remedy that situation and we will be able to use this spot as a shallow well for the land.

On the home front, we had a bit of a scare these past few weeks with Silas. He has been losing weight and having some bladder control issues. After a lengthy visit to the vet with x-rays, blood work, parasite test, and a urine culture, our next step is to change his food and give him a different antibiotic once the culture comes back. All I can say is that he is lucky he is cute. The only good thing that has happened since he became ill is that the cats have taken an interest in stepping all over him and cuddling him at the cutest times.

Garden cuddling Silas during a mid-day nap

Last but not least, we went blueberry picking! We now have 5.5lbs of blueberries for winter waffles, jam, or snacking.

I most likely ate about as many as I picked. I wasn't of much help. Sarah did most of the picking.

All in all, it was a great "weekend" and now we are relaxing in the kitchen and making some choke cherry mead!

We are building a Yurt!

The topic of a yurt came up a few years ago when I began obsessively researching yurts, how to build yurts, floor plans, and the scarce but informative blogs that others have created to map their journeys of yurt living. I quickly decided that I wanted to build and live in a yurt, my partner however was not so sure if the yurt life was for her. After some time and a considerable amount of research, we have both decided that building a yurt will be a great way for us to save money and move in to a house of our own. Since we both work at jobs we love rather than jobs that pay, we have hit a roadblock in terms of buying our own land.

I work at Green River Reservoir State Park as the Park Steward during the summer and have worked at ski resorts across the counrty as a ski instructor for the past 6 years. Although I am not sure about my future employment since I have just recently graduated from Sterling College, and currently on the search for a "real-ish" job.

                                                                     That's me in the middle. 

 Sarah is a farmer, she works at Elmore Roots, a fruit tree nursery, in Elmore, VT and has previously worked at many organic vegetable farms before she found her passion of fruit trees. I have it pretty good with her being a farmer. Fresh fruit and veggies, I just have to help with the digging and harvesting, the planning, brainwork, and weeding is all her. 

Together we have our "zoo" which is our 2 cat-daguhters Floki and Garden, and our pup Silas. 

Floki was the first child who was a birthday gift to Sarah on her 21st birthday. In her mind, she is the queen of all dog beds, water bowls, and window protector of the house. She is a princess, in Sarah's mind. 

Garden is our dumpster kitty. I found her under a dumpster in Hardwick one rainy and cold spring evening. Much to Sarah's chagrin, I brought the sopping wet, dread-locked, mucus mouth home. It didn't take long before Sarah was in love and Garden received her name after she was shunned to the garage and decided to play and sleep on Sarah's gardening equipment. from that day forward she became Garden, the most needy, always starving, butter-eating, drooling, dirty, hunting cat we have ever laid our eyes on. 

Then there is Silas, he is a New York death row pup who stole my wounded heart with his fat head and goofy eyes. We had recently lost our previous pup, my heart-dog, Sage, to cancer, when I came across his photo. Something in his look told me that he was coming home to us. Much to Sarah's chagrin (do you see a pattern?) He came home and became the goofiest, neediest, pain in the ass dog ever. 

So, now here we are, a zoo of a family, with big dreams of owning an orchard and living on our own land, with no money. So how are we going to do it? Well, we are blessed with amazing friends and family who have supported our decision, offered us land to live on, and opened up their work shop to my multiple crazy ideas. We are at the beginning of our journey, with our first purchase of a sink from a resource store and our first big purchase of the lumber needed to build the walls and rafters. We are on our way and can't wait to live in our very own yurt.