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The long-awaited Monday 21.6.2021 was an unreal, euphoric day, one I lived more in the moment than the days of my youth. On that morning, which completely transformed our cottage life, I still didn't quite believe that the sauna would really arrive.
I nearly spat out my morning coffee when the sauna's black facade suddenly slid into view on the back of the lorry. I shouted to my mum, who was fixing the roof of the old sauna, like a child in a playground who has spotted the ice cream van. Mum, Mum, Muuuuum, it's come!!! It's here!
When I climbed up onto the cottage road to touch the sauna, I had reached the summit of my own Everest. Stroking the solid wood surface for the first time was an almost sacred moment. The feeling was like winning the lottery, winning at the Court of Appeal and Christmas Eve all at once. It was like the first rush of getting tipsy – which, admittedly, may have been down to the bubbly we popped first thing in the morning, and may genuinely have been exactly that.
The new road sank less than we'd feared, as the old hand reversed down into the cottage yard with the sauna without hesitation, in a heavy transport vehicle weighing about 30,000 kilos. What skill!
In no time the sauna was ready to be lifted into place. A quick swing round on the straps, and it was skilfully lowered onto the pier blocks. Confetti was raining before my eyes. I offered the driver some bubbly and I think I even invited him for a sauna. He politely declined both.
Help, how high up the sauna seemed compared to the old one. I realised I was far too short to take photos of it at the same level. One of the pier blocks didn't seem to reach the underside of the sauna, but I didn't think any more about it at that point. Surely it would settle.
In an instant the landscape became charmingly unfamiliar. Luckily, we chose to order the sauna with its exterior pre-treated (one coat). I wouldn't have had the energy to start painting the sauna room straight away either – we had also ordered that fully pre-treated.
New Sauna [now Ehta] explains that the interior walls of the sauna room are quite often treated at the factory precisely because the sauna benches and heater have already been installed. The benches can also be pre-treated at the factory with Tikkurila's Supi bench wax, as was done in our case. So the only thing between us and our first löyly was the unwashed sauna stones, which, by the way, were also included in the package delivery. There was even a quality bench cover waiting on the benches. Perfect service.
The first löyly
The sauna's thermally modified pine floor smelled intoxicating. The paint fumes rising from the heater's first firing, on the other hand, were genuinely intoxicating. Damn. Sometimes it pays to read the instructions beforehand. I had been busy washing the sauna stones and carefully picking out the heart-shaped ones to go on top. What I hadn't realised was that a brand-new wood-burning sauna heater must always be fired empty first, so that the protective paint burns off.
I hardly remember anything of the first löyly we got to enjoy actually inside the sauna. It was that unreal. On the top bench you sat high up. The landscape of my soul opened up perfectly through the big picture window, though at first from a strange angle. Sitting on the wide middle bench, which reaches almost to the back wall, the view settled into a familiar one.
For a moment I wondered whether a sturdy CLT panel could have allowed an even bigger window in the sauna room too, but perhaps bathing in an aquarium like the sauna lounge wouldn't be very practical. Especially when there are guests at the cottage. We didn't order tinted windows, by the way, although that would have been possible.
Unlike my earlier cottage sauna experiences, this time I didn't sit hunched up, afraid of spiders. Of course, I realise spiders can get into a new sauna too, but you get the point. The spruce plank benches didn't feel too hot even in fierce löyly. No resin stuck to my bottom. From the picture window I could keep an eye on the children in the lake. The löyly was easy to breathe. I didn't want to leave.
I did a tea tree foot scrub and a face mask. There was room to lie down on the benches. I slathered myself in an outrageous amount of the sauna honey left on the benches as a housewarming gift. This kind of pampering never even crossed my mind in the old, cramped sauna. Comfort has been taken to a whole new level, and making the most of its full potential will still take some getting used to.
While writing this blog, I started looking for photos of the sauna benches to go with it. I realised I had hardly taken any. Dirt shows easily on black, and the benches would need washing before taking stylish photos. In practice the dirt doesn't matter, as I decided right from the start that the sauna is first and foremost for using, not for social media photos – but to be honest, black is a challenging colour. It's really striking and stylish, but merciless in revealing every stray hair and grain of sand.
The great interior design scam
I hadn't given the sauna lounge's interior any thought at all beforehand. Many people think of me as an interiors person, but let me reveal it now: I'm really not. I go wherever the trends take me.
I envy, for example, my friend Suvi Penttilä, who has always had a strong style of her own and has stayed true to it for at least twenty years while interior trends have come and gone. In that time I've drifted from country romance to Scandinavian style, which most recently has been influenced by – surprise, surprise – boho. Truly individual.
In my time I've invested quite a lot in timeless design, but it hardly takes any particular sense of style to buy a String shelf from Vepsäläinen and line it with Design Letters mugs, does it? A Toj clothes rail sticks out in the hallway of my flat next to a Latva coat stand, a reminder of the days when I could afford to spend on interiors.
It didn't take taste, though – it took money. And thanks to a crazy battle with mould, there's none of that left. Now decorating would take ingenuity and personality.
As a result, the walls of our sauna lounge are decorated with a rose-gold mirror from K-Rauta and an IKEA NORDRANA fabric organiser. Functional, but hardly anything to boast about in terms of creativity.
But at least I have something personal and sentimental. For the sauna, I found my grandma's old nostalgic retro towel hooks from sometime in the '60s. As the sauna has its own entrance, the towels have to be kept in the sauna. On the other hand, that means they're always wonderfully warm to wrap yourself in.
Costs
I've had lots of questions about the costs. It's always worth budgeting on the generous side. We started by building a road to the cottage in the first place, and it had to be patched up three times in all after the tractors and lorries had been over it.
The extra loads of gravel blew the foundation budget, and the groundwork, including moving the old sauna and the base for the deck, came to about €10,000. On top of that, changing the use of the old sauna and moving it to the other side of the plot required separate building permits. The building permits for the new sauna cost approx. €500. The surface treatment products for the sauna lounge cost a few hundred euros.
On top of this come the costs of the electrical work and our site supervisor, which we're still waiting for. And then, of course, the deck. Timber is expensive right now, thanks to coronavirus, so we're seriously considering leaving the deck until next spring.
A gorgeous Rexener hot tub is arriving in late summer/early autumn, so before the deck, but apparently it can be sunk into it just fine in that order too. The hot tub choice will get a post of its own, as will the Zebra double blinds from Kaihdinmaailma that we chose for the sauna lounge. Maybe one day a well and a jetty too… and a fibre-optic cable has already been run to the cottage. Maybe one day we could move there for good!
I've received first-class service and a first-class modern garden sauna that I can warmly recommend to everyone!
– Mirkka Torikka
