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.
Sep 8, 2008
Sep 4, 2008
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.
Sep 3, 2008
The front deck
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.
Putting the slices together
Layout your pattern on the floor with a sharpie marker. Set the 2 x 4 tapered panel on the floor and using your hot wire tool just cut the board to match with the black lines on the subfloor. Label the piece and go on to the next. What the picture does not show is that all the pink insulation board is set on modified thin set and held to the floor with large plaster lath washers and screws.
Sep 2, 2008
Cutting Foam Pizza
Hot wire jig for cutting rigid foam tapers.
The end result of this process will produce two 2' x 4' foam boards that are tapered from one end to the other. The slope is 1/4" to a foot. Just what I needed for the shower pan underlayment. Less some spelling errors on the annotated pictures, the whole jig cost me less than $40.00. I'm sure that a less expensive solution could be made if you have a shop with stuff hanging around.
The end result of this process will produce two 2' x 4' foam boards that are tapered from one end to the other. The slope is 1/4" to a foot. Just what I needed for the shower pan underlayment. Less some spelling errors on the annotated pictures, the whole jig cost me less than $40.00. I'm sure that a less expensive solution could be made if you have a shop with stuff hanging around.


Make sure when you are actually cutting the board that you have plenty of air circulation. I kept my shop open at both ends so I had a good breeze happening when I did this. Not much smoke with my setup, but don't take chances with the vapor. Cutting all the material I needed was a snap. It took longer to make the jig than cut the foam.
The Shower Pan
Usually shower pans are built with a waterproof membrane, concrete, wire mesh and more concrete. None of this appealed to me as this shower pan would be almost 8' square not the standard 3' x 3' size. Moving all that concrete made me shutter. I had to find a better way.
What was needed was a very large funnel shaped floor. The slope would be 1/4" to every one foot of run. Than means that for every foot of travel the floor would slope down a quarter of an inch. Since the drain is in the center of the room the maximum distance is 4 feet. 1/2 of eight is four and four feet of travel is one inch. The drain in the center of the room would have to be one inch lower than the edges of the room.
The problem then was how to make this slope. I thought of using tapered screed boards but that meant that I would still have to lift tons of concreted and scrape the concrete to an angel. No good. Brainstorming, I drew radiating lines from the drain to the edges of the wall and what I saw was a bunch of pizza shapes. If I could make wide tapered pizza slices! I then remembered some work I had done years before. Using a hot wire a person can cut ridged foam insulation like it was butter. Hot wire cutting of ridged foam was the answer!
Framing a sliding wall
Framing an interior wall in a log cabin requires some extra thought. The logs of this building will shrink about 1 1/2". That means that the ridge pole will be lower than it is when it was first installed, the openings for the door and windows will be smaller too; care must be taken to allow for this shrinkage or door and window frames will carry the weight of the building separating the logs. Interior walls are also effected by the outer walls settling.
Here you can see that I've left space between the gable framing and the square interior wall below to allow the gable to settle. The interior walls are held against the log walls by first cutting a slot in the stud then pounding in a 20d spike in the upper part of the slot. As the wall shrinks the spike will keep the wall vertical but slide down the slot as the building shrinks. Since the sauna also has an interior shower I've had to make sure the water supply has room to move. Don't install water pipes without room for them to move! It you don't the building will shrink and push on the pipes. Not shown is the 1/2" sliding bolt that keep the lower wall trim with the gable wall. This is the same principal as the side walls. A bolt is secured to either the top or bottom plate, then allowed to pass through the other plate. The bolt keeps the walls together but allows them to settle evenly.
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