Yeah, a woodworker friend says cedar is up 40% and the raw cedar is probably half the cost.
We have been using it less during the heat wave. We don't have A/C in our house, so when it's balzing hot, the desire to hop in a sauna is low. So lately it's been only once every couple of weeks.
In cooler weather it's more 2-3 times per week which is about as much sauna as I feel comfortable with. Two days in a row leaves me feeling a bit drained.
This might sound a bit odd, but here goes... I've never been driven much by material things. Mostly to me money always simply represented free time and freedom in general. For a variety of reasons (the way I was raised, environmental reasons, general conservatism), I generally do not enjoy buying things for mysefl. But when I was a kid, still living with my parents, driving my uncle's cast off car and working as a packer in a warehouse, I started going to a gym with a sauna and always thought that if I were rich, I would have one at my house that I could use anytime. Now I have it and every single time, now at maybe 40 or 50 uses, I sit in there and feel rich. It's something I've felt perhaps 60 times in my life and 50 have of them have been in my backyard sauna. The first night that we sat in there with the snow falling outside was incredible.
So 10 months in, my only regret is that I didn't convince myself to do this 15 years ago, right after moving into this house. I still would never have spent that much money on myself except my wife and father talked me into it.
