GerTee's Traveling Retail Office

GerTee's new traveling retail coverings:

The interior will be pink linen and teal flowered wall fabrics, top ivory edging with damask tassles. The interior ceiling will be horizontal strips of white, ivory and olive green, draped below the beams. The windows are 345 degrees covered with white tulle netting . The inside window curtains are sheer lightly patterned fabrics and the outside window covers are 3' wide pieces of multicolored waterproof upholstry fabrics, hand tied up to open. Interior walls will be framed in German white lace curtains. It's gonna look like a full size princess room!

I've decided to take the 18' GerTee to Anchorage and rent an outside space for us in a comercial parking lot. Manufacturing will remain in Kenny Lake, but it's time to take a finished gertee to market. This will greatly affect my ACL research time but it could provide us with the funds to take ACL Books to book fairs and print a mass market paperpack edition. This will also be a great chance to get a good gertee tutorial written with lots of new pictures! Then when we start going to the bookfairs we can set up a gertee as our display! ABA 2010!

My initial target customers are summer brides getting married on glaciers and other remote spots. Tim makes beautiful diamond willow 4 poster beds which could be draped in lace and on display in another new big 20 footer. My new fur blanket will drape the white lace bedcovers. Thinking I may be able to convince a furniture dealer to borrow some fine pieces for the upgraded guest room/honeymoon suite display unit. If I have wood and tile flooring and nice furnishings it'll be an easier sell to people who have money. Selling to the rich means I'll have a way to get the information to the poor, who can't afford it but need it the most. I could host building seminars right there on the days I close, and maybe even get a write up in the paper.

I've always been able to to visualize how gorgeous gertee could be decorated, but I've never had the fabrics to prove it. Thanks to all the Idiatord ebay buyers I now have a nice selection to work with. I'm not going to bother wasting my time convincing Alaskan men gertees are safe and affordable housing anymore. I'm going to target women, most of whom could care less how it stands up. Women adore the skylight and how welcoming it feels to walk into a round room. Men walk in and scornfully sneer about it falling down or not being warm enough for winter. Women walk in and swoon and exclaim, "Ohhhh, it's soooooo cute!" Who would you rather sell to?

And the final touch will be me wearing one of my Indian belly dancer veils to hide my gaping smile. If I wear the pink one, I'll match the room! After all, I am the Alaskan Tent Lady, hehe.

GerTee gets an arctic entryway

GerTee has an arctic entryway! It's not finished yet, but it won't cave in, for sure. I used a clear plastic garbage bag to cover the wall in front of the door so we could still get the light, for as long as it lasts anyway. We're losing more daylight every day. But there's NO snow and it's been above freezing!!!!

The weather has been so nice I've managed to finish a couple outside projects that I was sure would be left undone until next spring. Put up another cheap, thin rooftarp after the high windstorm came and showed me how badly it was needed. I am SO glad I bought a chainsaw. It changed my world.

Daniel cleared a spot and laid down a gravel foundation for their GerTee, but he decided it would be easier for him to build a cabin because he just knows how to do it already and can get one up quickly. His wife is so excited he's finally getting to build her a house! We're all very lucky my lease allows me to do whatever I want with the property. The reason they moved to Alaska was because New Hampshire is totally controlled by communitarians. Most places in the U.S. assume Americans can't build without the government's permission. Thank goodness there's no local (international) government planning agencies with any power here... yet.We're building a new online shopping mall: PrimitivWerks at campredington.com

Interior GerTee coming together

Took a couple days off from construction to arrange the kitchen and pull out my winter gear. It started snowing an hour after we got back from Anchorage. It's staying about 27 above so far and I can already see I should've made sure I had a 24' x 24' heavy tarp on the outside roof. I have to seal off the entire floor and should have laid tarps down first. Learning so much about important things like ventilation and how to layer the inside roof insulation. I have to create a space behind the Radiant Guard and the outside roof tarp because the roof needs to be the same temp on both sides. I'll use the parachute Ron gave me for that, then I'll staple the RG insulation over it. Don't have enough insulation left for the walls and floor and my roof sucks, but last year at this time I was in a wall tent and it was a LOT colder (by Nov 2 it was 40 below zero). If I start to feeling overwhelmed by the tasks ahead of me, I only have to look back and I'm real happy to have this funny little hut-tent this winter, even with all it's quirky problems.

I'm surrounding the woodstove with metal tables and shelves so I can keep water and food warm. I also have a place to rise bread now, making my first loaves tomorrow.

The new living area fits 4 friends. We had a little house warming party last night. I made moose pot roast and Sharon cooked up a pot of yummy potatoes. We made a gravy out of the juice. It was such good meat. Both the moose and the potatoes came compliments of friendly neighbors.

Snowed last 2 days... think I have enough coats and snowpants? I kept finding gear at garage sales for practically nothing and I figured I can't have too many dry ones if I'm going to be out in the snow all winter getting wet cutting wood, trapping, or falling off a dogsled.

The rugs sure helped inspire me. Got all three at Salvation Army for $42.