Powerslave

There comes a time during the campaign when the commander opts for the "big push" with the intention to gain the upper hand.
The time was here and now...

The goal for the weekend was to wire up the entire construction (hence Powerslave).
Intended to install lights in both the dressing room as well as the actual sauna and a power socket (always good to have) in the dressing room.
Added to that is a separate power feed (400v) needed for the stove.
Wise from previous projects I know it's a tedious task to bend and install tubes for the power cables.
Not to talk about trying to pull cables that a are thick as a thumb through these tubes.

However as always circumstances may change the planning. I this case the weather was excellent, dry and shiny. So we prioritized getting the house fully painted.
Low and behold, a few hours later the entire thing was covered with a base coat making it weather proof for the entire winter, excellent.

Paint coming up

With that settled I turned my attention back to the wiring, tedious as it may be I had all wiring done by late Sunday.
Seeing the light indoors sort of gives the construction life, it's no longer an empty shell with no interior.
It's becoming a sauna for real....

Be there light...

Put a double halogen spot just above the door in the dressing room.
The light bounces neatly off the walls and cealing providing a toned down yet functional lighting.

Lights up

Most might be satisfied when they've met their goals, but that's not how I work.

Why stop when you're on a winning streak?

So in went the floor in the sauna room.

Honestly how difficult can it be? All floor boards were delivered pre-cut to the correct size.

All I had to do was to carve a hole for the power cables for the light and the stove. As well as splitting one of the boards to actually fit it into the room.

Also I got to spend to quality time with my new Makita (see last post).

moonlighting

So here it is, the sauna room with light and all.

Cozy feeling

Look at this! It's never been so close to actually become a sauna.
I'm literally a few connections away to fire up the stove....

Watch out for the black mamba

Yeah, well the dressing room still deserves some attention...like a floor.
But what the hell I'm building a sauna not a dressing room. I'll happily walk naked over the lawn if that's what it takes to enjoy my own sauna.

In need of love

Title reference: Powerslave/Powerslave/Iron Maiden

November rain

It's November so it rains, no surprise there.
All water from the roof just falls off and gathers up as a nice little lake under the house.
Some might claim it's a feature, type of an indoor jacuzzi.

Well not to keen on having water standing under the building for the entire winter I had to do something about it.
Hardly rocket science, it boils down to fitting the rain gutters and drain pipes.
Spent the entire Saturday wrestling with the rain gutters. Pretty satisfied with the fact that the gutter from the garage drops down to the gutter from the sauna building and then finally down to the sewers.
Luck?
Don't think so. Endless hours of planning and measuring now pays off. The edge of the roof from the sauna is just below the edge of the roof from the garage...sweet.

My wife stepped into action and managed to throw some paint on half of the building. At least covering the back and the right side since those are the most exposed parts.

Sunday I took a break. Haven't had a free weekend for...umm, can't remember so we thought we'd do something with the entire family,
Off to Kalmar and visit IKEA, the kids love it and my wife gets to spend time with all the trinkets you associate IKEA with.

Well I didn't completely drop the sauna project, a quick visit to Bauhaus to pick up some essentials.
Power cables, light fittings, laminate floor for the dressing room.
Figured that even though floor boards were shipped with the building I'd rather put a laminate floor on top of that as it makes it so much simpler to keep it clean.

Then it struck me, my own Christmas present.

A multitool + driver drill combo with a triple LI 18v battery pack and speed charger....

All neatly packed in stackable boxes.

My wife looked at me and wondered, don't you already have two of those?
My old Makita is ~10 years old making it a rarity,
It uses a 12v 2.6Ah battery pack, the new one is a nose shorter and has a  LI-ion bat pack with a whopping 18v 3Ah....woah.
Gotta have one....

So here they are, the veteran vs the hotshot.

Old school vs the young gun

Yeah I know it sort of became a bit of tech porn towards the end of this post but you know, boys and their toys.


Title reference: November rain/User your illusion I/Guns n' roses

House of fire

"Let's build a house of fire, baby"
The year was 1989 and Alice Cooper preached about building a house of fire.
I found the title and lyrics suitable for this weeks post.
The deviation is that the sauna I build has an electric stove but what the h-ll it's going to be warm so "house of fire" is a fitting description.

Saturday morning, 0600...woke up head full of details how proceed with the task ahead.
Double espresso and a proper breakfast.
Still pitch dark outside, preparing the day by pulling my gear together.
My head is spinning at overdrive speed, anything I've missed?
I got through the construction again for details I've possibly missed.

First light, I'm out to get an early start.
The weather is, well November and the sky i gray. It's not really raining but there's a thick mist in the air. I can't be bothered with minor details such as weather, I've waited 11 years to build the Finnish temple....

Starting out from this.

I immediately ran into a minor hiccup with the fact that some of the supports had set since last week and I had to jack them up in order to level the supporting frame (remember my last post, don't ever cheat with your construction).
Well considering that we still had in just two hours come to this level.

Less than an hour later we're here

Door frames are simply to slide in place.

Window coming up

 Taking shape

Saturday is finished with erecting the entire building and laying half or the roof.

Not knowing anything of the nights weather we ran around in the dark with torches to lay out tarp over the entire roof. Remember the roof is still unprotected and you really don't want water on it.

Sunday morning, overslept a bit. Almost 7 in the morning. Well still dark out so a quick double espresso and a breakfast later I'm out.

The day starts with setting the other side of the roof. Again a piece of cake since all parts of the building a pre-cut into correct size including roof boards.

Just put the hammer to the nail, a no-brainer...

See where we're getting at?

Once the roof is laid it needs to be protected. Our choice was to lay two layers of roofing felt.
I don't want a hard surface such as sheet metal as it would sound awful when it rains.
It would be like taking a sauna in a barrel.

Now a problem strikes. The roof boards are only 19mm which causes issues with Swedish standards as the shortest roofing felt nails you can find are 20mm. Not keen on having the inside of the roof to look like an upside down Indian spike bed I had to come up with a solution.
Doing some investigation I came up with the fact that this would only be a problem for the lower felt as it's rather thin. The upper felt is much thicker and the combined thickness of the felts along with the board was more than 20mm.
So what do you do?
Adapt and overcome!
I had to grind the individual nails to size. Awkward?
Yes!
Though I refuse to let minor setbacks such as that stop me.

Grinding nails to proper size

First layer of the roofing felt is up.

I would love to show pictures of the final construction with all the layers of the roofing felt and what not. But it was dark, as hell....The last two hours we worked with torches and a 2x500w halogen spotlight pretty much illuminating the entire neighbourhood. The job needs to get done, I don't care what it takes.

But who cares!!!!

We pulled it together, the building is now erected and water proof...nuff said!

I'm tired and my entire body is aching but my soul is cheering with satisfaction.

So I believe it's time to treat my body as well....here's the reward.

Satisfaction guaranteed

Btw, guys at Brygghus 19 "Respons" was awesome...:)

Not to forget:
Thx to Ulf Karlsson and Dan Eneborg for helping out.

Title reference: House of fire/Thrash/Alice Cooper

If you want peace, prepare for war

Just like Mannerheim, Patton and Rommel I plan the strategy for my campaigns.
Semper paratus, always prepared is together with the ability to adapt the foundation for success.

I've scrutinized the plans for the building, to the level that I pretty much know by heart where each and every item shall go.
Knowing the assembly order I've sorted all material in the order they are needed, from left to right the garage. Marked numbers on the material either with a pen or post-it notes
Stuff belonging to the porch which will not be assembled now is put to the back of the garage.

To further simplify life I've taken the 3D image of the cottage and marked each and every piece of material by number.
This will server as the master plan for the build/assembly to come.

3D model with all relevant parts marked

The trick will be to flip the model in my head as the house is going to be mirrored, since I want the entrance to the left.

Semper invicta

Title reference: If you want peace, prepare for war/Are you dead yet?/Children of Bodom

Stand your ground

Saturday morning started out with what best could be described as the trenches of Verdun.
The rain that had come during the week made the ground all soggy.
Oh, well borrowed a small bucket from the kids and pretty quickly drained the worst.

Trenches of Verdun?

If last weekend was a drag then this was quite the opposite.
Last weeks endless hours of digging, levelling and measuring now paid off.
Within two hours I had the outer frames/floor beams in place and properly aligned.
Take the lesson good people, never do a bodge work with the foundation or else it will come back and haunt you for the rest of the build.

The rest of the weekend was spent with setting the support properly in the ground.
Assembling the rest of the frame/beams and fixing them to the supports.

Fixing the frame to the concrete supports

Also laying out the drainage to dispose of the water from the right side of the building.

Sparks in the air

 Finally arriving at this.

I did some deviations from the original ground plan (by Polhus). I added support stones to all beams as I feel that a 45x90 at a length over 4 meters requires support. I want a rigid floor that feels solid when stepping onto it.

The one with a keen eye might spot a beam that sticks out from the others. It's an additional beam I had to add as I did a small mistake. (Yes in the same manner as the sun has its spots, even I do make mistakes every now and then.)

I got the distances between the rear most beams somewhat to small as I measured them center-to-center. But apparently it should have been measured inner-to-inner. Therefore the distance between the last inner beam (third from the back) and the outer wall (double 45x90 beam) became 70 cm which is too much for a floor. 

Hence I simply added a beam in between and the problem was solved.

The "launchpad" is built, weather gods willing we shall see a take-off next week....

Title reference: Stand your ground/Villainy And Virtue/Dead To Fall

The eagle has landed

Today it arrived, the entire package containing my hopes and dreams...:)
5 meter and 1.4 tons of wooden material in one single package.
The stove and stones together with the seats/bench of the sauna was a separate package of roughly 200 Kg.
Fortunately I had the heavy cavalry waiting around the corner to do the lifting.

cavalry to the rescue

From there on it was simply grunt work to shift the stuff into the garage.
With Prussian precision everything is (of course) labeled/numbered and piled in the order the parts will be needed. It's what we in Sweden would call a "plockepinn" on a massive scale or perhaps an adult version of Lego.

1.6 tons to waiting to be shifted

Prussian "ordnung"

The day we erect the building there shall be no confusion and digging in the piles to find the individual parts.
Also I need to check that everything is there according to the inventory list.

Lastly when I opened up the stove to see it was not damaged, a smile spread over my face and I got this warm fuzzy feeling.
I could sort of see myself sit there in front of the stove, contemplating on life whilst gently feeding it with water...

Title reference: The eagle has landed/The eagle has landed/Saxon

Rock bottom

Initially I thought I'd call this post for "Welcome to my nightmare" but it had a somewhat too negative tone.
Guess this sort of sets the tone for the weekends achievements.
The plan was to level out the ground, measure out the building and set the concrete supports.
Easy enough, huh!?

First task was to remove a bunch of planks from the wooden deck as the new building will cut into the deck due to it being somewhat wider than the previous shed. All for a good cause, let's call it collateral damage. Found new usage for my car jack, apparently it works well on wooden decks too.  

Some quick sawing later that part of the job was done, the next was to start levelling the ground as there was some 20 cm difference between the ground where the old shed was and the ground under the deck.
However I quickly realized that under a few centimeters of soil the entire area was ladened with cobblestone...lots of it.
Either it's an old roman road or a stockpile for some anarchist stashing it for the next riots.
Anyways it took me ages to clear out and pile the stones, honestly probably closer to 200 kg

anarchist stockpile?

Shame on me if I would give up that easily.
Having piled up stones and filled my trailer with surplus soil it was time to make some holes for the foundation. Bringing out my trusted tools expecting a rather smooth work....*error*

The right tools to poke holes in the gound

First off the entire ground was more or less just mud...proper thick mud.

Drilling into that is tough work, who the hell needs a gym?

Need to loose a few kilos? I got the remedy for that.

Mud, all mud

 Thinking that now I'm finally getting somewhere the devil takes the final piss in my face.
In one corner of the building the drill hit stone pretty immediately. Me stupidly thinking it's probably just another stone.

Trying to excavate the stone it pretty soon becomes evident it's plain bedrock.

No way in hell I would be able to get rid of it.

Some cursing and re-positioning of some of the supports I finally called it a day/weekend.
Light was out and I could hardly see what I was doing.

As Dr. Claw always said: "Next time Gadget next time"...or in my case next weekend.


Title reference: Rock bottom/Dressed to kill/Kiss