“We get emotional every time someone thinks we’ve renovated an old house”—a new log home that fools everyone
Journalist Henna Helne and her family wanted a break from city life and built a log villa in the countryside as their second home—one that’s definitely not designed to look new.
Home: A log house in Asikkala, completed in 2019, featuring 6 rooms, a kitchen, a sauna, and a glassed-in veranda, measuring 180 square meters (1,940 sq ft).
Living here are: Henna Helne, spouse Pauli and children Julius, Linus and Amos.
Follow on social media: @hennahelne
Right from the start, we knew a simple summer cottage wouldn’t be enough. In 2013, we were still a young couple without children, but we were already dreaming of our own place in the countryside—a refuge from Helsinki’s hustle and noise, which we often had our fill of in our downtown home in the Töölö district.
We mainly looked for an old house because we loved the atmosphere of creaking floors and tiled stoves. But fate stepped in when a friend told us about a lovely plot in Asikkala, with a neglected 1940s house on it. The owners had kept up the garden, harvesting its berries and apples, and heated the old yard sauna, but otherwise the house had been unoccupied for decades.
The place wasn’t for sale, but we decided to check it out anyway. It was a Sunday in March, and clouds hung low over the surrounding fields. When we arrived and walked down the little gravel road toward the lake, the silence felt almost palpable.
The once-white plastered house, clearly past its prime, stood on a slope surrounded by a garden. I remember thinking that if it looked this beautiful in sleet, imagine how lovely it would be in spring. We decided we’d find a way to buy it. Finally, the owner agreed to sell us the plot and the house.
That spring now feels like ages ago, and so much has happened in the meantime. We spent about a year getting acquainted with the plot and thinking about the fate of the old house. Its foundations were in poor shape, and the basement flooded every spring.
In 2014, while expecting our first child, we decided to demolish the old house and build a new log villa in a traditional style on the same spot. Keeping the garden as it was mattered greatly to us. Knowing how sunlight moved through the original structure helped us plan room placement in the new house.
The log frame went up in early summer 2016. As first-timers, we severely underestimated how much work it would take, and my husband worked on the house whenever he could get away from his job. Fortunately, we didn’t need a strict move-in date—we were building a second home to last a lifetime.
Life for us now is exactly what we dreamt of, even before having kids. For our three children, traveling between two homes feels natural, and it’s only about a ninety-minute drive. We spend as much free time as we can at the house.
One of the best parts of our country home is the sense of community. Our house is right in a residential area, so the kids have friends close by, and we have a neighbor who acts like a grandma, playing with them next door.
We also adore our old garden, where we make use of everything: rhubarb, currants, raspberries, and apples. We still heat up the old yard sauna, too.
Because our house looks old from the outside, we’re touched every time a passerby thinks we renovated the original building. Even though our home is new, both the house and its surroundings have the soul of a place that’s been here for ages.
