The Greenhouse Part 2

 

Painting is not my favorite task and I only intended to paint the greenhouse once but SURPRISE Kilz Ultra Bright White is actually a cream color....sigh....I'm not a real picky person but I kind of wanted my greenhouse to match the house and the shop which are WHITE and so I painted again....

And while I was painting Phil was working on the water catchment. It is basically a gutter that runs into a small plastic barrel and a line runs through the wall to a small faucet with a hose on it so that I can fill a bucket inside the greenhouse and have good rainwater to water the plants with. 

He also built me a potting bench inside along the back wall. I have shelves for the sides ordered but UPS lost them the first time and I am trying again to get more.  

After that we chalked all the cracks between windows and boards. I still have to do some chalking around some of the older window panes but for now it is pretty weather tight. I have taken my hardier cacti out there and they are doing fine. When we got down to freezing for a few nights, we ran a cord from the shop so I could have a heater in there. 

This summer ventilation will be more important. The spots at the roof line are filled with insulation and those can come out, the window on the front door can be opened and I bought these solar powered fans that I can put in those open roof line spots to help get the heat out. I tested them out today and they work great. Whenever sun hits the solar panel they stay on. The fans also have a manual on/off switch that I like. 

I plan on started my vegetables for my raised beds this year. I feel like I am a little behind on some of them but right now I am having some back issues and will get it done when I am better. Looking forward to a great growing year this year now that I have my dream greenhouse!

The Greenhouse Part 1

I have wanted a real greenhouse for a long time. The one I had at the old house was made of wood and plastic. Nothing wrong with that but I have always wanted a...well...nicer one. I brought up the subject with Phil about making one from old windows and he liked it and we started searching for our windows. The windows were all found on Facebook Marketplace for various amounts. Some were $5 each, some were more and some were bought in lots of 20-30. 

 

He put the first side together to give him an idea on what size to build the other sides. 

Then it took some figuring to get the other sides right and we had to get more windows before it was all over. 

The door is a storm door from Marketplace. I wanted one that I could open so that we could use it for ventilation and a storm door was the perfect thing to use. 

I'll say now that this was a tremendous amount of work and even for my small greenhouse the walls were incredibly heavy. 

It's finally altogether here. In Part 2, I'll get it painted and the water catchment system and a few other things.