Team Effort
Building a sauna requires many skills. Basically, it is a small house. There are windows and doors, a roof and a foundation, framing, sheathing, subflooring, and the like. It also requires a design, and in many cases a permit, which will include drawings such as a site plan that shows required set backs and orientation. All of this I can do—from plans and permit applications to foundation to chimney. I pride myself on being able to do it all and on being as comfortable holding a drafting pencil (yes, I do drawings old-school) as I am a pick axe or nail gun. But the truth is, sometimes it is better to let others do the work they do best, so I can focus on what I do best, which is design and build saunas.
Recently, I had a job where distance made it much more efficient for the owners to use a local contractor to build the shell while I did only the sauna interior and the overall design. It turned out that Tim and his crew were much more adept than me at not only building the shell but carefully replicating the trim details of the one hundred fifty year-old adjacent main house. By the time I got to the job site, the interior was ready for my sauna work.
Just like many other types of projects during the pandemic, planning sessions on this job happened on the web or via text; we only actually all met once. Despite that, or maybe because of it, we weren’t in each other’s hair (a sauna is, after all, a very small space). Things flowed very smoothly once we got over the scheduling speed bump caused by the pandemic-induced supply chain upheaval.
The sauna sits perfectly between the historical architecture of the house and the modern look of a contemporary sauna. It was a team effort that paid off.
Credits: Sauna design and interior by Rob Licht / Exterior by Deblois Renovate and Remodel of Fayetteville, NY
