It's been a long time!

I've just now taken a look at my blog and found post from 2009! Yikes. I really didn't think anybody was watching this.....it could also be that I'm not as technical as I thought I was, or perhaps just lazy? To those of you who have been looking please accept my apologies for such a long time in updating. I"m going to try and see if this blog will forward email to my email account so I don't miss any posts.

Well, I'm about ready to begin to focus on the sauna again. We are thinking about replacing the stove with one that opens into the steam room, rather than one that passes through the wall into the dressing room. It does keep the steam room clean by feeding the fire from the dressing room, but at the expense of over-heating the dressing room. I think this would be nice for folks who only take a sauna once in awhile, but we use ours twice a week and all the extra firewood to heat the dressing room seems like a waste of effort.

I'll be back and post some pictures of what the new gardens around the sauna look like.

-Bruce

August 2009

Keeping a blog current is hard. It is something that should just be added to the daily chores. Forget about the vegatable garden, with all this rain I should have been thinking about planting soup.

Long winter

It's been a long winter. I've got some additional pictures.....just not at this computer. I'll post them next time.

I put a skirt on the deck and didn't leave enough room for the frost so the deck has now heaved about four inches! erg. I'm embarrassed -as I really do know better than to to that kind of thing. That's what happens when I get in a rush, boy is it easy to fool oneself sometimes. While I'm at it, I also messed up on the slope of the pipes feeding water to the shower......yup, they froze. Didn't break any pipes so to fix this I have to crawl under the sauna.....I deserve it! ha ha. I'll get it right. I'm thinking that I'll stop up to 3/4" or 1" pipe for the last few feet to make sure the pipes drain when I want them to.

This spring the first chore will be to fill in the blog with pictures of all the little things we did over the winter. Then continue with the final interior work. I have to put tile on the concrete block behind the wood stove, add some copper heat shields..this will be cool, weld up the trim around the dressing room stove door, build the wood box and add the dressing room sink. On the outside we will be adding some whimsy to the log hand railing and installing some drainage to keep the soil dry around the base of the sauna.

I am so looking forward to getting outside once again.

Also on the list this summer will be a new vegetable garden in raised beds and if I'm lucky the start of the honeybee house.......

Cedar benches......at long last!

Cedar benches! I was fortunate enough to find that Lowe's stocks 5/4 cedar decking. By selectively picking through the piles of lumber in several locations I was able to find many, almost clear cedar boards. I used these for the bench framing. Overkill perhaps, but the price was just about 1/2 that of clear cedar trim that we used for the bench tops. I think the final count was almost 25 - 5/4" x 6" x 8' boards. It's important that you fasten the bench tops from the bottom. Sounds silly, but the last thing you want to do is to sit on a 140F hot screw head when you are taking a sauna. The door in the last picture is a aromatic cedar 'sandwich' framed with VG Fir. The 1/4" cedar closet lining boards were glued to 1/4" birch plywood foundation on both sides of the door. This gave me a 3/4" panel with aromatic cedar on both sides. This panel was then framed out with VG Fir stiles and rails. The handles on the door came from the cement isle at Home Depot. Cement float tools have wooden handles. Take the float off and the handle is just perfect for a sauna door. There's a ball catch on the top of the door. This keeps the metal strike etc. away from your legs when you go in and out of the sauna.

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Deck Stairs

This spring we had very windy weather and a large Ash tree fell across the driveway. Perfect! Our Alaska Saw Mill came out and we made stringers and treads from that tree. A tool that was very handy is the Prazi attachment for my 8 1/4 Milwakee 'side-winder'. This small chain saw attachment was also used to cut the tapers in the gable logs. I used 1" dia oak dowels to peg the treads to the stringers then sawed them flush. The stringers meet the ground on two flat rocks I moved there for that purpose. Oh, yes. I folded up leftover shingles to place betwen the stringers and the ground to keep water from wicking into the stringers. The stringers are fastened to the deck with 1/2" x 8" lag screws. If the ground heaves due to frost the stairs may lift. If that happens I'll have to hinge the stairs at the rim joist of the deck. We'll see this winter.

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The front deck

The tiles needed time to set so I moved outside to build the front deck. The budget was getting tight so it was time to use what materials I had on hand. I also had to add two more sono-tube columns as we wanted the deck to extend along the north wall of the sauna. These I had to dig by hand. I set the piers to be inside of the front edge of the deck. I think I might want to add a small stone wall under this part. We'll see how this all looks when we get closer to the end.

Cover the slices with cement board and tile

Using a 1/4 x 1/4 trowel and modified thin set, I covered the sauna floor with 1/4" cement board. I suppose if this were a house and I wanted to make sure there were no leaks I could have glued the foam boards together at the but edges with some form of butal caulk. Since the foam board is waterproof the only places that might leak are the joints between the boards. I didn't do that here and I'm not expecting any leaks.

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