#thermowood

Most outdoor saunas are finished the way most garden buildings are finished. Softwood, a coat of stain or paint, and a quiet assumption that the owner will get back up the ladder every year or two to do it again. It works, until it does not. The coating fades, the wood underneath moves with the weather, and the maintenance that was easy to ignore at purchase becomes the thing you resent in year three.

We take a different route with the cube line. The exterior timber is treated twice before it ever reaches the workshop, first with heat, then with fire. Neither step is decoration. Both are old, documented methods for making wood last outdoors, and stacking them is the reason the cladding can be left largely alone for decades rather than maintained on a schedule.

The problem with painting a sauna

Paint and stain sit on top of wood. They form a film, and a film can only hold for so long against rain, frost, and a low northern sun. When the film fails, water reaches the timber, and untreated softwood responds the way it always has, by swelling, shrinking, and eventually inviting rot and insects. The coating was never changing the wood. It was only hiding it from the weather, and buying time.