The Shell

Before we even began constructing any walls, I decided to prime all of the 5/8" thick T11 plywood siding. The primer/paint was supposed to cover 300-400 square feet per gallon and I only had 12 sheets (totaling 384 square feet) but I ended up using 3 gallons because the siding was very coarse and sucked up a lot of paint. The directions on the can suggested the surface be primed first.... Wait, I thought this was primer?

However the primer/paint was cheaper than what our final paint, which will match our house, will be so the time and effort will be worth it.

With the knowledgeable assistance of my friend Steve Seibert we were able to fabricate the walls and apply some of the siding in one day. Steve was a carpenter years ago and he was very helpful in helping layout the studs and fabricate the shell. He had an abundance of construction tools which we used. Having the right tools for a project makes things go much easier and safer. He also loaned me some of these tools to help complete this process. This structure ended up being a lot bigger than I had envisioned it to be! However, with it being raised up on a deck and having 8 foot ceilings in the sauna this structure it is bound to look tall!

Our son, Michael Leppala and his fiance, Emma Autio were visiting us when we were working on this phase of the project so they assisted us in measuring, cutting, and installing the rafters and fascia. We also installed 2x6 boards around the perimeter of the roof rafters to provide a solid edge to support the roof plywood and fascia.

We didn't get the fascia correct on our first try so I had to rip it all off and do it again. We aren't carpenters so some of this work may take a few tries to get it right, or at least some of our mistakes hopefully will be hidden from view when it is completed.

Second try on installing fascia goes a bit better. These LP Smartside  facia boards (8" wide x 16' long) were nearly $50 apiece so we didn't want to goof up too much with them! 

1/2" thick 4' x 8' plywood sheathing was installed over the rafter system and covered with 15 lbs felt while waiting for asphalt shingles to be installed. If I had to do it over again I would have used OSB as it seems it is more solid than the plywood sheathing.

Perhaps some bad luck turned into some good luck. We had a bad hail storm in May and needed to have new shingles installed on our house. It took a while to get approval from our insurance to redo the house roof so it wasn't until late July until the roofing crew showed up. While the crew from Bear Roof and Exteriors was putting new shingles on our house  we hired them to also put shingles on our new sauna roof! 

This the only portion of the project that was not done by ourselves.

We painted the exterior siding and trim to match the colors of our home. Although we did not originally plan to have horizontal trim boards  around the exterior, they were helpful in covering up our not so perfect seams in the siding. The horizontal trim and painting the upper portion different than the bottom portion also helped break up the high height appearance of the structure. 

We painted much of the trim before we installed it on the structure to avoid having to do some of this fine work high up on a ladder. We have to still do some touch up but I suspect that will happen next spring.

We installed a 15" x 30" glass block window on the south side which will provide some natural and diffused light into the sauna room. We really don't need a window to see our neighbors next door and they don't need to see in our sauna either. The glass block window is a perfect application for bringing in some natural light.

Again, this was a new experience for us and it was a bit frustrating getting the grout into the space between the window and the wall framing. However, in the end it turned out okay.

(As you can see, we ended up running out of paint to complete the exterior siding.)

Like everything else we have done, it may have taken a couple of tries to get it right but we did install the exterior door leading into the changing room.

We bought this knotty alder door as a second from a local lumber yard. It has a few gouges on the exterior but it just gives it some character! The outside of it was primed and then given two coats of exterior paint. The interior of the door had two coats of polyurethane applied to it so the natural color, grain, and knots of the wood would show nicely.

An adjustable threshold and door knob were added to complete the door. In addition, a narrow strip of wood needed to be added to the exterior door frame to match the thickness of the completed walls.

On the upper portion of the south side we installed some James Hardie shakes which match the kind and color of what we have on our home.

Again, this was a new experience for us in installing these shakes and it was like doing a giant jigsaw puzzle. In hindsight, the trim work should have been thicker.

Vented soffit panels were installed under the eaves to help properly vent the attic space.

I really didn't think much about how the soffits would be done in the beginning of the project so how we ended up installing the soffits was perhaps a bit unorthodox but in the end it worked out.