Finding and using old wood samples is a vocation and passion for Gabriel Lortie. Now he is using some of what he has salvaged from work in the construction of his own custom sauna at his home in Massachusetts.
Lortie is a builder and engineer by trade. He is a partner with his father, Bill Lortie, in Lortie and Sons Construction, a Massachusetts building and design company the senior Lortie established.
Many different kinds of wood he has found have been at job sites, including material that was part of the beams shaping church steeples. In their work, Lortie and his father have restored, rebuilt, and installed a number of steeples in New England, designing them to withstand the sometimes harsh weather.
Experimenting With Different Species of Wood
With the sauna Lortie is doing some things he hasn’t done before in the use of species of wood. Some wood going into the sauna moldings would otherwise be discarded after job projects. “I see a 300 year-old piece of wood with history, character, and it’s gorgeous when you refinish it. It’s just a brilliant orange reddish pine,” he told Suite101.com at the sauna site.
In addition, he ordered Alaskan yellow cedar wood from Washington state for the sauna interior and benches. Alaskan yellow cedar grows on the northern Pacific Coast of North America from Alaska to southern Oregon and is known for its strength and durability.
The website he went to find the cedar was recommended by a contractor on a church restoration project in Massachusetts on which the Lorties worked.
Saunas Made of Cedar Standard in Finland
Lortie is building a Finnish style sauna for which, in Finland, cedar is considered the standard. He also plans to have knotty pine paneling and use both clear pine without knots and wood with knots to go around the sauna.
With the arrival of the Nippa stove, he is preparing to complete the brick work in the 45-square foot sauna room and run the flue for the stove. The sauna is designed for three to four people at once depending on the space the stove takes up.
Lortie has not yet installed the flooring though it’s an aspect he’s dealt with before from doing hardwood flooring with his father and his tendency to notice any problems with floor work, he said. He can take his time too in laying the sauna tile having no immediate financial imperatives in how long the work takes. “I’ve had contractors who rushed and had to come back and redo tile on my job sites.”
His original drawings had the sauna walls at nine or 10 feet. He wanted to have a walkway across the top of the sauna to a dormer, a window-featured extension of the roof for usable extra space, he explained. That proved unfeasible because of costs of the structure, roofing, railing, decking, and windows.
Estimated Costs for Sauna Work and Materials
The sauna’s construction has not been an inexpensive enterprise. Lortie estimates total costs of materials to date of over $16,600 for the entire building and labor costs so far of $17,700. The cost of the stove was approximately $1,200 and $1,900 for the Alaskan yellow cedar.
He has tried to get as much work done as his budget allows at a given time. In donating his own labor, he said he’s been able to put more into materials.
Other items on his agenda are building an outside deck for use as part of the sauna and perhaps a Jacuzzi for the future.
Many people could probably build a sauna with do-it-yourself kits that are sold, Lortie noted, but it can be as complicated as a house. His sauna has a full slab underneath it to reduce moisture. It is beneficial to have framing and interior experience, he added.
(Some sauna kits provide plans, instructions, and a materials list. Others provide all pre-cut materials that then require assembly or an entire pre-built sauna needing only installation.)
Lortie has installed the interior windows for sharing heat to the rest of the building’s common room when the sauna is not in use. He anticipates soon being able to honor the Finnish tradition that’s part of his family background.
John Seidenberg - John Seidenberg has worked on newspapers, newsletters, radio news, and produced specialized news publications as well as freelance ...
