You get what you pay for

A cedar barrel sauna for under $5,000 with an electric heater and a window. Wow, this was an auction item I couldn’t pass up. 

I’ve had building a sauna on my radar for many years, and as a former woodshop teacher, it's the ideal DIY project. Unfortunately with a young family, a new business, and life, it had not reached priority status yet.

So while shopping for a Seacan, I stumbled across a sauna ‘deal’ and I knew it must be destiny… or so I thought.

I won the auction for $4600… “Bargain” I thought.

When we arrived to pick it up, I quickly noticed some deficiencies:

A lack of ‘bead and cove’ joinery between the boards… a little too much space for my liking.

And the door hardware… primitive at best… not even an inside latch… now that I think of it.

The heater… an asian brand without a traceable pdf manual… hmmm?

And the fact that the window broke before we got home was probably fortunate, preventing a future mishap.

Experiential learning at its finest.

Some lessons must be learned (and re-learned) the hard way. 

You get what you pay for, and if it seems too good to be true… it probably is.

We will use the sauna, and likely enjoy it greatly.

And the best part is it will be the catalyst to build my own version, except better… obviously.

• Now that’s a peak ethos.