Limewash and Leaf-Peeping: A Fall Build Update from HAVN
There’s a week or two every October when the western Maine mountains look almost unreal. The hardwoods along the valley turn every shade between ember and butter, the brooks run cold and clear, and the air smells like wet leaves and woodsmoke. We’ve been lucky enough to spend this one on site, swinging hammers with that view over our shoulders.
It’s also been one of the most satisfying stretches of the whole build. Both cabins have reached the point where you stop seeing framing and start seeing rooms. Here’s where things stand.
Alpen: Becoming a Home
Alpen, our Alpine-meets-Nordic cabin sited above the brook, is deep into finishes.
The soffit is going in now. It’s one of those details most people never consciously notice, but it’s the part that makes a roofline look finished and crisp against the sky. Watching it go up against a backdrop of orange and gold has been a highlight of the season.
The kitchen and countertops are in. This is the room where we pictured slow breakfasts, mulled cider and long dinners after a day on the trails, and seeing it built out for real is a little emotional.
The bathroom floor is tiled. The bathroom is one of the spaces we’ve obsessed over most, and with the floor down it’s finally starting to look like the design we’ve been sketching for months.
And the walls are limewashed. This one deserves its own section.
Why We Chose Limewash
Limewash is one of the oldest wall finishes in the world. You’ll find it on centuries-old farmhouses across Scandinavia, whitewashed villages along the Mediterranean, and old stone cottages all over Europe. It’s a fundamentally different material from modern paint.
What it is. Limewash starts as limestone. The stone is heated to make quicklime, then mixed with water (“slaked”) to create a lime putty. That putty is thinned, tinted with natural mineral pigments, and brushed onto the wall in loose, overlapping strokes.
How it works. Regular paint forms a plastic-like film that sits on top of a wall. Limewash does something different: as it dries, it slowly absorbs carbon dioxide from the air and turns back into calcium carbonate, which is essentially limestone again. In other words, it cures into a thin layer of stone on the wall.
Why we use it:
- The look. Because it’s applied by hand and absorbs unevenly, limewash has natural movement: soft clouding, gentle variation, a velvety matte depth. It shifts as the light changes through the day. On a gray winter afternoon it glows; at golden hour it practically breathes. Flat paint simply can’t do that.
- It’s breathable. Limewash lets moisture vapor pass through rather than trapping it, which suits a cabin that sees snowy boots, steamy showers and post-sauna evenings.
- It’s naturally mold-resistant. Lime is highly alkaline, which makes it an inhospitable surface for mold and mildew.
- It’s natural and low-odor. It’s a mineral finish without the heavy chemical smell of many conventional paints.
- It ages gracefully. Limewash doesn’t peel the way paint can. It wears softly and develops patina over time, which is exactly the kind of quiet, lived-in character we want HAVN to grow into.
Most of all, it fits what HAVN is about. We want the cabins to feel rooted in their place and connected to old Nordic building traditions, and calm in a way that’s hard to name. Walls that are literally made of stone feel right for that.
Skog: Closed Up and Coming Alive
Back in the trees, Skog (our mid-century-meets-Nordic cabin) hit a huge milestone: it’s fully weathered in and sided. With the shell sealed against the coming winter, the work has moved inside, where the drywall is being finished up now.
Skog’s defining feature is its shed-roof form and the big picture-frame windows on its tall wall. Now that the interior is closed in, standing inside and looking out at a forest in full fall color has given us our first real sense of what guests will experience. It’s the kind of view that makes you want to sit down with a coffee and not move for an hour.
What’s Next
Over the coming weeks, Alpen will move into its final finishes, and Skog will follow its drywall with paint and the interior details that bring it to life. Each week the cabins look a little less like a job site and a little more like the retreat we’ve been dreaming about since the first tree came down.
Be One of Our First Guests
Alpen at HAVN is open for pre-booking now. If you’ve been following along, we’d love for you to be among the first to experience it: the limewash walls, the warm kitchen, a hot tub under the stars and a sauna to thaw out in after a day in the mountains.
And if you’re not on our list yet, sign up to get build updates (and first word on Skog) straight to your inbox.
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Tyler & Chloe, HAVN by Stay Hygge
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