The yurt making is progressing, although not as quickly as I’d like. We continue to work on felting the cover nearly every Sunday, the sanding is completed, the painting has begun and we bought a door for the yurt. After our weekend of felting in the rain, it took a while for the felt to dry out.

Here are three pieces of felt drying in the sun. The two long ones are wall panels and the one on top is a roof panel. The felt is hanging on our front porch railing so you can see the scale and how big the pieces are. Unfortunately, I figured out that I had made the roof panel the wrong size. I thought, “16′ diameter, that’s the size I need”. But I forgot about the 33″ of the tono and the amount that the roof poles rise. So the first roof piece was too small. Luckily, it didn’t get felted all the way because of the rain (silver linings and all that).

So I laid it out again and re-did my measurements. It needed another 1 1/2′ – 2′ of wool added around the bottom edge. I had planned on using three batts of wool for each roof panel but now I realized that wasn’t enough, I needed four per panel. So four bags short. But Ed and Sue from Sugar Loaf Wool Mill are coming to the rescue and making up four more batts for us.

Can you see the line marked line on the right side of the tarp? That’s how much more wool was needed. I added that on and put wool on either side of the already partially felted piece. I was a bit worried about it all holding together but it felted right in.

I finally finished sanding the roof poles. Dennis drilled two holes in the bottom of each one. That is where they will connect to the wall.

I reamed out the holes with my little rotary tool and sanded the ends again. Now they are ready for painting. 

This is s a photo of the garage ceiling (see the light fixture to the left?) where Dennis rigged up a holding system to paint all those boards. He used plumbing supplies and attached a cable.

So we just slide the boards on to the cable through the top hole. (Ignore the skis in the background.)

All together, the cable will hold about 15 boards. We decided we needed two cables so we could paint more boards at a time.

Dennis started on the painting process. Our original plan was to use the paint sprayer but Dennis thought it would be too messy. So he is painting them with a brush. I think I would have voted for speed and a mess but…

Here you can see the boards drying (exciting watch paint dry, huh?). If you’re wondering about the orange, it is a traditional color for painting yurt frames. Either that or red. I decided the orange would go well with the brown wool.

Dennis also started painting the tono. I am planning on decorating the tono with more intricate designs, but that may have to wait until we’ve gotten the rest of the yurt finished. You can see some traditional yurt tonos here.

The nice thing about the paint is it covers up some of the less than beautiful joints.

During the evenings while we’re watching TV, Dennis and I have been getting the cords ready for connecting the wall poles together. Each piece of cord is 6″ long, burned at each end to keep it from fraying and one knot is tied.

We only have 350 more to go.

This is sample boards connected together with the cord. To make the lattice hold together, the wall boards will be connected with these cords. Anyone up for a lattice connecting party? I thought I had taken a photo of the door we bought but couldn’t find it. We originally checked at our local home stores but a door was going to be $180-$200. That seemed a bit high. So we went to a ‘Restore – Habitat for Humanity’. They have used building supplies. We found a framed, already hung door for $40. Of course it isn’t bright orange, so I’ll need to sand it down and paint it orange. So I guess I lied about the sanding being completed 🙂