Add Living Space Without All the Headaches of a Remodel

(ARA) - If someone handed you a blank check and said you had an unlimited budget to build your dream home, what would it look like? Most people would use the money to build a mansion in the suburbs or along a lake or beach, but not Becky Kemery. Her dream home has just one room and measures 468 square feet.

"I live in a yurt at the foot of a mountain in Northern Idaho and have never been happier," she says. What's a yurt, you ask? By definition it's a portable, tent-like structure with circular lattice walls and a cone-shaped roof supported by rafters that meet a center ring.

No one knows exactly where the first yurt came from or how it was invented, but from written history, we do know yurts originated in the high mountain steppes of Central Asia, and that nomadic tribes in both Europe and Asia have been using the round structures for shelter for a millennia.

Kemery developed her love for these simple structures in the early 1990s while attending a retreat in Northern Washington State. "I ended up renting a yurt during my year long stay in the area and was very taken with it," she says. "I loved living in a round space, the openness of it, the feeling of uplift and especially the close connection with nature."

Now more than a decade later, she's living in her fourth yurt in a third state, and when she looks out any of the five large windows in her home, she's one with nature. "I have a view of the mountains, large trees, wildlife and plenty of blue sky. At night, I can look up at the stars through the skylight dome at the center of the structure. It's just wonderful," says Kemery, whose home's ability to tie-in so well with the beauty around it is just part of the draw.

"A lot of people think yurts are just structures they'd find at, say a state park, but it is actually possible to outfit them with all of the comforts of home. Because they are round, yurts make better use of space. They are also more efficient to heat and cool, they can be insulated, and rated for heavy snow loads, plus their design provides less wind resistance making them a very safe shelter during a storm," says Josh Lindholm of Rainier Industries, a leading manufacturer or yurts. "Those attributes make them very attractive to homeowners looking to expand their living space."

With the average home addition now costing upwards of $74,000, according to Remodeling Magazine's "2006 Cost vs. Value Report," and yurts starting at just $5,500, they make sense for a lot of people. "Not only do they offer a great value for the money, they're a lot easier to put up than an addition," points out Lindholm.

All you have to do is decide where you want to put your yurt, build a wooden platform for it, and with some basic carpentry skills, you can raise it in about a day's time. Some people, like Kemery, actually live in yurts full-time, others who own them use them only occasionally as…

* An affordable alternative vacation home
* A private ski cottage or hiking oasis
* A guest house or home office
* A secluded spa enclosure
* Art, music or fitness studio

Or as a living space to use during home construction. Biology professors Dan Beck and Kris Ernest lived in a yurt for four years while building their house near Ellensburg, Washington. "Our son was a newborn and our daughter was three when we moved into the yurt," reminisces Dan. "We all slept in the loft together on two futons. We loved living in the yurt." Now that their house is built, they've sold their yurt to another family, but both Beck and Ernset say not a day goes by that they don't miss it.

If you'd like to take a yurt for a test drive before deciding if it's the home addition option for you, Rainier now offers a smaller model called the Sparrow. Available in 12 and 14 foot diameters, it's perfect for camping, as it can be put up and taken down easily, and comes with an optional vinyl floor.

To learn more about yurts and the various types available, log on to www.rainieryurts.com.

Courtesy of ARAcontent