A 4.5'x10' sauna on one of the more challenging sites and footprints we've taken on. The long, narrow dimension forced every detail to be deliberate — and the access made the build itself a project before we ever cut a board.

The sauna sits on a lower deck with an open, uncovered deck above it. To handle runoff from that upper deck, we built a hidden internal roof inside the structure to deflect any water away from the hot room. Inside, it's all clear vertical-grain cedar run vertically, with clear cedar benches and backrests. The exterior is clear cedar run horizontally — a simple, intentional contrast to the vertical interior.

Heat comes from an 8kW Harvia KIP with WiFi controls. At the client's request, we also mounted infrared panels on the ceiling, wired and controlled separately from the sauna heater, so they can run traditional heat, infrared, or both.

Getting materials to the site was its own job: everything was hand-carried down roughly 30 side-yard steps, across the yard, and up two flights of stairs to the second-level deck. The property now reads as a full wellness stack — hot tub on the lower deck, sauna on the second, and a seating area up top.