22 May 2011

This post begins in 1991 when Brandan was called to serve a mission in Finland. Brandan loved many things about his mission and about Finnish culture and especially enjoyed Finnish saunas.

When we built our house, we talked to the builder about putting a sauna in the master bathroom. He had never built a sauna before and thought it wouldn't have resell value. We left space for the sauna anyways, thinking we'd install one soon after we moved in. It took longer than we thought, but Brandan started working on the sauna in March. The first step was to remove all the baseboards in our bathroom. In the photo, Abe is scraping up the caulk left behind.

 

The next step was to frame in a room 5 1/2 feet by 8 feet.

 

Heat rises, so to help keep the heat close to the bathers, Brandan lowered the ceiling inside the sauna to 7 feet. Becky and Sophie held the framing while Brandan nailed it in place.

 

The outside of the room is covered in drywall and painted to match the walls in the bathroom. Here's a photo of Brandan and Abe hanging a sheet of drywall. The little kids were fascinated by the building process and very interested that most of the walls in our house were built the same way.

 

When the drywall was finished, Brandan put insulation in the walls and covered the insulation with a reflective moisture barrier.

 

Next Brandan began installing the wood paneling. We chose hemlock instead of the typical cedar or redwood for our sauna because hemlock has fewer associations with allergies than more aromatic woods.

 

Here's the finished sauna. It has upper and lower L- shaped benches, with the stove and door on the opposite wall from the long side of the benches. The bucket holds water to throw on the rocks and increase the intensity of the heat. 

The sauna passed its inspection on Wednesday and we tried it out that night. The kids bounced in and out of the sauna, liking the novelty of the experience, but not sure about the heat. Sophie stayed in the longest and liked it quite well.

 

Other news from the week: on Thursday we attended Honors Night at Sophie's school. She was recognized for her GPA and also received a "Solid as a Rock" award. This recognition is given every year to students in each grade level who demonstrate the character traits of respect, responsibility, accountability, integrity, honesty, self-esteem, patriotism, loyalty, work ethic, social responsibility, empathy, self-motivation and self-restraint.

 

Abe did a hiking double-header this weekend. He hiked Lower Table Rock with his class on Friday and Upper Table Rock with Becky, Helen and Gibson on Saturday. Saturday was a beautiful day to hike. Abe was like a mini park ranger as he taught us the botany and geology he had learned the day before.