Wall number One.

This morning we went to pick up another double paned window from a local chap on marketplace, we have not done a full inventory yet, but believe that we have about 80% of the required glass.

It makes sense then, that we need places to put the glass, and in this case, the door that we picked up just a few weeks ago. It was a case of jotting down a sketch of the door end, after all, the 111" that the frame measures is not by accident, we need to be able to fit one 30" x 77" door and two pieces of 34" x 76" glass from one side of the patio doors, the 4x4 door frame and the 2x4 end studs.

We will call this wall number one, another component in the kit for the vertical walls, wall one (door) and wall two (far end) with initially two 145" cross beams to keep the pair of them up, almost square, and almost level.

There it is, wall number one, 111" wide and 83" tall. This was the heaviest piece that we actually had to move in one assembly, but of course, we managed. The second wall will be constructed, probably tomorrow, along with two 145" composite beams that will sit on top of the two ends. Interim 45 degree supports will be added for some semblance of squareness and rigidity, and then when we are happy, we will paint the vertical frames before installing windows.

Wednesday : A square, level foundation, well, mostly...

Today a couple of hours spent joining the four sides together with two goals in mind, well maybe three if you include position in relation to the shed and fence. The first plan was to make the corners square so that it creates a rectangle, not a parallelogram, we used a couple of techniques to achieve that, the first being 3 nails, tapped in at 3' and 4' distances and on one corner and then measuring to achieve a 5' hypotenuse. 

After that, we threw caution to the wind and used a large metal square for the other corners, surprisingly we created a pretty good representation of a rectangular base, all of the joints being very unprofessional with multiple toenail screws going in left, right and centre. The second task was to make the sides level with each other, which meant moving some gravel about over many iterations, but again, we did it.

The result is an almost square, almost level, frame for our greenhouse build.

It is time to take a short break from the project, we are off up to Port Renfrew for a well deserved break, looking at nature and the bottom of a glass.

Tuesday : The End Bits

Three days have passed since the construction of the "side bits" and after doing some preliminary painting (staining) yesterday, we assembled each beam with many screws and have almost finished the "end bits" for the greenhouse foundation. It should be noted that on Sunday we bought two more gallons of stain, this time from the Restore, Habitat for Humanity, for the grand price of $18.19 a gallon, so there will be a lot more brushwork involved during this project, some of which will be later on today to finish off these two beams on the unseen sides.

In theory, we should be able to screw the sides and the ends together on Wednesday and as previously mentioned, we will attempt to position the finished 12' 1" x 9' 3" frame as level and as square as we can on our gravel base, I suspect there will be some fun and perhaps a little frustration during that levelling process! - but to check if the frame is square, we will use a bit of old fashioned trigonometry.

Monday, shovelling away

Another day, another task, more excitement. 

On the marketplace we noticed that someone quite local was selling a yard of crushed 5/8" rock for twenty bucks, a cheap foundation for the greenhouse. The main task being to transport over a ton of the stuff from A to B and of course, the little car that could was put to task once again, along with the pair of us doing the grunt work which we managed to complete in four trips.

The base is not levelled yet, but we needed somewhere to store the two side beams, which are ready to be matched up with the yet to be constructed end beams. We will paint the wood this afternoon so that we can start assembly tomorrow.

Although not level in the photo, the side beams give an idea of scale with the existing shed structure and I can mention that as with the tolerancing of the beams and frames and roof, and almost everything else on the project, that base will never truly be level, it will be close, but we are just building a greenhouse here, not the Taj Mahal.

Exact tolerances are for working engineers, not retired ones.

Later That Day

Two of the foundation beams of the greenhouse have evolved over the course of the day. 

Give or take 1/4" here and there, the two "mirror image" side beams have been assembled, The combined length is approximately 145" with 137" from the 4x4 beams, joined sort of in the middle and the pressure treated (which will be on the bottom) has a 4" overlap at each end which will help with the assembly of the rectangular frame when the end pieces are complete.

It was a learning day for young Karen, how to use the drill to drive the salvaged 3" screws into place safely, how to keep the job site tidy and how to combat various ants that wished to be in her pants. It was a good group effort, but as it was a hot day, the enthusiasm completely disappeared at the end of the work session to be replaced with a good old fashioned relaxation session with a beer or three.

The above two will be fully stained and then other sessions, probably Monday and Tuesday, will involve the creation of the end beams and perhaps on Wednesday, the base will be complete and we can start building a greenhouse.

...and so it begins

Another Saturday and today some of the slow but necessary bits of the construction preparation begin. Staining. We have one large dropcloth and the base 4x4 pieces for the sides shown (two 72" and two 65" lengths) will add up to 137" which when added to the end widths of 4" will add up to a total length of 145" or 12' 1" and the end pieces in turn will be created from an 80" and 31" piece, for a total width of 111" or 9' 3" (calculated for the cumulative sizes of the two 34" windows and the 30" door and associated uprights) and those will undergo the same process.

Below those will be pressure treated 1x6 to partially join them (with minimum overlap of 12") and they will provide the initial join, so I've painted one face of each so the stain will be the sandwich filling. I was thinking about putting a plastic sheet in between as well, but stopped worrying about rot, the assembly will actually be mounted on 1.75" high 8x16 concrete pavers at 3' intervals, and regardless, I cannot do much about weather and insects, because it is Canada...

I will stain it more.

The stain I am using, a cheap mistint from the Dulux store, is Wood Pride 9690A Oil based Acylic Stain and was quite a deal at $5 for almost a gallon, it will provide some protection for a while I hope.

Time will tell.

Mind boggling Saturday.

In the last week or so, when free wood appears on marketplace it is usually gone before you even get a chance to ask. The other extreme being that you ask, and ask, and ask and never receive a reply, this is the conundrum of marketplace.

An advert came up for free wood, so I asked, and amazingly the guy replied, and we arranged a meeting for Saturday morning at 11.30am and even though we were a little tired from our Friday adventure, we set off with hope, I thought that we could get a dozen or so 2x4 for framing the greenhouse, perhaps more. 

We arrived and found the chap, Linden, and it was obvious that he, and his family had build a very impressive duplex, it was about 35 minutes away in the Florence Lake area, up around where Costco is if that means anything to anyone. The guy was enthusiastic about unloading his wood, and started moving it from an upper area. It was very obvious that we would be leaving with a lot more wood than we expected.

This may not look like a lot of wood, but altogether, on the first run, we picked up around 35 pieces of 2x4 all of which were between 6' and 8' and mostly straight and in good, yet dusty condition, at the time of writing an 8' piece would be about four bucks from Home Depot. As we were loading the first batch he said to Karen that we could come back as many times as we wanted, so we decided, as it was about a one and a quarter hour round trip, that we would go back for another load.

So there it is, around 70 or more pieces. We thanked Linden for his generosity and he equally thanked us, he explained he needed to clear out all of his construction materials in the final phase and was just happy to see it go. You can also see all of the 4x4 posts at the back that we bought on Friday and this new pile of 2x4 will be more than enough to fully frame up the greenhouse, complete the roof truss frames, probably provide all the materials required for growing tables or boxes as well.

The pair of us ended the day tired with all the lifting, but it was truly an amazing day and we went off to the hotel for a well deserved pint.