Building Ro-An (Dewy Hermitage),
a 2-Mat Japanese Teahouse
Figure 1. The finished teahouse as seen from our bedroom, Spring 2006.
In the Spring of 2004 Judy and I decided to build a two-mat Japanese teahouse in the front garden of our home on Mercer Island, Washington. In addition to doing the construction, I had the grand notion that I would document the entire process in words and photographs. Well, the teahouse got built, finished in late summer 2005, but the documentation kind of ran out of steam toward the end. Even so, I was able to pull together some text and photos to show what we built along with some of the process and the thinking that lay behind it. The result is a bit disjointed, but here it is in case you find it interesting.
The text is in three parts:
- I. Background.
- Some history of the Japanese teahouse and reasons why we wanted to build one.
- II. A log of building activity.
- This log covers the time from when we started construction until the point where the main frame was up (and I got lazy and stopped keeping the log).
- III. Final report.
- A description of what the finished teahouse looks like along with some more description of some of the materials that went into building it.
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