One Year!! We have been in our Yurt Home for one year ... and a few days! My how time flies! We moved in last year, on January 6th, 2023, and never looked back! Okay ... maybe we looked back a little bit. We have found ourselves asking if we've made the right decision many times over. Quickly followed by, "but this was really our ONLY option!" We've had our challenges, but we are learning to get used to our Yurt Home. Dare I even say that we are getting comfortable? There is still A LOT of work to do, but slowly and surely, we are making it feel more and more like home. Our dreams (that felt like they were in the VERY distant future after having to give up our farmette) are starting to look a little clearer. Things are slowly starting to come into focus. And by slowly, I mean S.L.O.W.L.Y! We can only do things as time and money allow, and we are short on both, so things don't happen as quickly as we'd like them too! Most days, we still feel like we are merely surviving, but we are getting closer to the life that we have been hoping to create for ourselves.
Things that are going well in our Yurt Home ... We have a large portion of the loft finished and have been able to move our bed to the loft. This has created a lot more space in the living room. The pellet stove, gifted to us by Matt's brother and wife, has been a HUGE help in keeping our space warm during the COLD, Wisconsin Winter months. It has also been helpful to have a mild winter, so far, this year!
This summer we were able to do a little bit of landscaping around the Yurts. I planted some flowers that were a gift from my brother's funeral, and some plants that we bought, together, as a family. The girls each gifted me a fruit tree for Mother's Day. Two apple trees and one plum tree. We were able to plant those together with Matt's help. We also had some rock that we purchased, and couldn't use, for our Mound system that Matt spread by the doors, so we wouldn't track mud into the house.
And, yes, we put in a Mound system (that was a fiasco, but I won't get into that right now). Our Yurt Home is by no means "off grid". We have an actual address with mail delivered to us. We have plumbing and electricity ... the whole nine yards! Our goal was never to be off grid, but to build a place we could afford that we could avoid, or immediately tackle, any mold growth. That goal, for the most part, has been met. There will always be some mold, which is just the nature of any living space, but we are able to find and remove it so much more easily! Eventually, we'd like to turn this space into a more traditionally looking home space, and less like a tent, but that is a future goal. For now, like I said earlier, it is feeling more and more like home.
Things that have been a struggle, and I'm not going to lie, there has been plenty of struggle! The domes, especially the one in the big yurt, have been a problem. They are cool, and it's fun to see the stars at night, but we have running water in the big yurt, as well as a stove that creates steam, and causes condensation on the dome. In the winter it freezes, and when it melts we've got dripping from the dome. It took us a long time to figure out a solution, but a few weeks ago, Matt bought some plexiglass, that he covered the dome with, so that the heat inside wouldn't reach the dome, and cause condensation and ice build up. We had tried plastic window coverings last winter, that "kind of" helped, but this winter we COULD NOT get it to stick! So far, the plexiglass seems to be working! We don't have running water in the little yurt, but the in-floor heat alone creates some condensation, so Matt covered that dome as well.
We have had some dripping from the big yurt roof into our hallway. We think there might be a few small holes in the canvas, or that the dripping might be coming from the seams. However, Matt used a sealant to cover the seams and that part of the roof, and we are still having a little bit of leaking. It is so frustrating, but thankfully, the canvas is mold resistant, and so is the sheet rock that Matt used in the hallway. This is an on-going problem that needs a solution.
Our in-floor heat has been a constant source of frustration for us! Matt has rearranged the system, flushed the system, done all the things we can possibly think of to get the system working more efficiently, yet somehow, we still have a whole section of floor, in our living room area, that WILL NOT consistently heat! Now that it is January, and the temperature is supposed to start dropping into single digits, it would be really great to have ALL of the floor heating properly! So, without our heating system working properly, and the need for space heaters, you can just imagine what our electric bill has looked like ... I'll just say, it's not pretty!
There have been many unexpected issues that have really sucked any savings we may have otherwise had. We have basically been living paycheck to paycheck. Not all of the issues are related to the house. A lot of those issues have been related to our cars, or other machinery. And then there's my on-going health issues. I've been doing a successful detox with a nutritionist, but somehow still got hit with a pretty bad sinus infection that on Monday decided to go to my eyes and cause pink eye. It is with great anxiousness, attention to detail, and utter avoidance of touching my children or anything they might touch, that I've so far successfully kept them from getting it also! But, not being able to see out of my eyes and just, in general, feeling nasty has meant that Matt had to, once again, stay home from work to help out. With that said, the detox has greatly helped with some chronic issues I've had. Particularly my chronic pain, and diabetes. I have been able to stop all of my medications, and maintain good blood sugars!
All in all, although there have been some huge challenges, we are grateful to have a place to call our own, and to raise our girls. Are there things we would have done differently? Yes, but overall, we are making it work, and are able to make some wiser choices going into year two in our Yurts.
I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year! We were able to host a small get together on New Year's Eve, which felt like a win and a great way to start off the new year! I hope everyone's year is off to a great start as well!
Until next time ...
Add comment
Comments