Built with heart

Inside Jaana’s log cabin, everything in the main room is old or reclaimed: “I’ve never seen a stove like this anywhere!”

When Jaana Sandström set out to refresh an old log cabin, friends, neighbors, and even local youth hockey players joined in. Memories of the past and her own handiwork make Jaana’s cabin days perfect.

Author Raija Forsström

Images Aki Niskanen

December 30, 2025Lue suomeksi

The cabin lot was packed with all kinds of generator-powered gadgets. The previous owner was an elderly electrician by trade, and a chest freezer had even been buried in the ground.

“Clearing started with those. I wouldn’t have dared stay on the property, especially during a thunderstorm, with wiring snaking underground,” Jaana Sandström recalls the days right after buying the cabin.

On this old building, the only new addition is out on the deck. Under the big sun umbrella sits a new wooden sofa set with loose cushions. Jaana was certain the front door had to be bright red.

“Right after Easter, I need to go see how the cabin has survived the winter,” Jaana says.

Ontojärvi is third-largest lake in the Kainuu area. There’s still plenty of undeveloped shoreline left, even though there are lots of cabins.

A summer nest of her own in Kainuu

Who: Physiotherapist Jaana Sandström, 61. All five of her children and their families use the cabin with her.

Cabin: A log cabin built in 1968, with a board-built addition from 1978. About 45 m² (484 ft²).

Where: In Kuhmo, Finland.

In three years, so much has changed. Jaana is immensely proud of the cabin she bought and how it looks now. Sunlight pours into the log-walled main room, and just beyond the window stretches the broad expanse of Lake Ontojärvi. A round table is topped with a colorful, large-flowered 1960s cloth, and the mood comes from many beautiful old heirloom pieces.

When Jaana’s previous summer place went to her ex-husband in the divorce, she started right away to look for a summer nest of her own. She found it in the autumn of 2022.

“I stepped into what looked like a board-built, pale yellow cabin and saw the main room’s beautiful log walls. That was it. It’s only fifteen kilometers from town.”

Jaana made an offer on the cabin immediately.

“I offered the asking price and went on holiday to Greece. There I got the message that the cabin would be sold to me. I started jumping for joy! I went and bought, as a vacation souvenir, the cabin’s first decoration: a big dreamcatcher. It’s now on the main room wall.”

The hanging hammock chair is the deck’s most popular seat.

The trees in the yard have been thinned and trimmed. Now the view to the lake is almost unobstructed.

In the old building and around it, there was plenty to do. Jaana had a clear vision of what she was aiming for. The exterior would be black, the trim boards white, and the front door absolutely bright red.

Fortunately, the tradition of volunteer work is still going strong in Kainuu, so help was plentiful. For the demolition of two outbuildings, local youth hockey players came with their parents. There was demolition to do inside the cabin as well.

“The attic stairs—and unfortunately the sauna, too—had to be torn out. I would have loved to save the sauna, but it turned out to be rotten through,” Jaana says.

A couple of acquaintances did all the interior demo, handled the kitchen remodel, and also built a spacious deck for the cabin. The deck went up on the lake side the very first spring so Jaana and her children could start enjoying cabin life right away. Jaana painted all the interior surfaces herself.

More helpers came through an employment project; the crew built a composting toilet and painted the house and the former washhouse, which became a summer kitchen. The washhouse had been a shed made partly from recycled window frames, with a big cauldron and a pulsator washing machine. The building was cleared out and made into a summer kitchen, and now the roof holds the lot’s only solar panel. With it, phones and coolers charge.

The main room is furnished with old pieces. Jaana knows the story tied to every object.

A mini stove was once added t the main room’s oven. In the restoration, the whole impressive ensemble received a white plaster finish.

An old chest of drawers took on an even older-looking finish in Jaana’s hands.

Jaana searched and found colorful cotton lace doilies from the 1960s at a flea market and sewed them together as decoration for the bench.

There’s no grid power or running water in the cabin. The generator comes to the rescue if Jaana needs to vacuum.

“Electrifying would have cost a small fortune. We’ve managed fine like this. The kitchen has a gas stove, and I’m considering a gas refrigerator,” Jaana says.

An unusual combination of oven and mini stove serves in the main room, renewed by a skilled local mason. Now it stands as the room’s beautiful centerpiece and recalls the upright stoves in the cottages of Viena on the other side of the Russian border.

“I haven’t seen anything like that anywhere!”

While waiting to move into the cabin, Jaana restored and had someone restore her heirloom furniture, combed flea markets, and kept an eye on dumpsters. In the main room, everything is old or reclaimed.

“I rescued a little chair from a dumpster; it’s probably over a hundred years old. It was thoroughly restored and now stands the main room.”

The 1950s rocking chair belonged to Jaana’s mother, who also passed down the small floral painting in the bedroom.

“My mother received it as a gift from the town’s former pharmacist family when, in her retirement years, she was their helper.”

On the bedroom wall hangs a small floral painting in oils that Jaana’s mother once received from a pharmacist family in Kuhmo. The Dala horse was a fair find, and the shell lampshade is something Jaana bought years ago.

The antique chair rescued from a dumpster is, after treatment, a showpiece in the main room.

The grandchildren sleep on the old wooden daybed in the main room. One door was permanently closed to gain more sleeping space in the room. The small wall plaques are pieces Jaana made from mosaics found in a hardware store’s clearance bin.

Under the antique glass dome, on a serving tray, is a freshly baked rhubarb pie.

When she bought the cabin the main room was left with lots of the previous owner’s belongings, but only the old pump organ got to stay. Its slightly out-of-tune voice now and then accompanies singing and dancing.

“I don’t want knickknacks here, just what’s genuine and good. Most small objects and decorations are things I’ve made myself.”

It’s clear from the yard and the cabin that Jaana is an active member of the adult education center and several hobby groups. She casts decorations in concrete, works with glass and clay, bends iron, weaves, knits, and sews. The hand-formed ceramic vase on the deck table is full of white roses.

There are a few flowers planted in pots in the yard, but otherwise the lot is left natural. In the mossy forest floor, pine-needle paths wind among heather, punctuated by a few roses and tulips she crafted onto rebar stems—blooms that never wilt.

Jaana has thinned and pruned trees extensively, because she feels the open lake view shouldn’t be blocked by anything. She can watch the water’s motion from the deck or the rocking chair for hours. The opposite shore is at least 10 km away, so in fog you can imagine being by the sea.

“Before getting this cabin, I secretly dreamed of a place that would remind me of my childhood summers: a sandy beach where the sun shone all day, water as far as the eye could see, and heavenly peace far from main roads. And that’s exactly what I got.”