Installed, well almost

The four end gable windows are now installed on the top edge, additional wood, brackets and screws will be added over the next few days and the OSB will be cut to further fill in the holes. 

In addition, a shelf on the right hand side has been installed and a sheet of pegboard awaits.

You can see the peppers that have moved in, they have become a little bit of a nuisance as we have to shuffle them around out of our way, however, they are very welcome to stay and we will see if the greenhouse will extend their season so they can provide food for our table.

The final holes in the gable ends will be filled with wood of some sort, probably the free OSB that we picked up early in the project, we may also add some air vents.

Cured!

The four fabricated windows, waiting to be painted :

These will be installed either Wednesday or Thursday, weather looks like it will be good and the four will be the last windows to be fitted.

Today we filled some holes in the greenhouse walls, installed more "nail strips" on the installed windows and painted the above, a few hours of work and we are both a bit tired after it. It will be interesting tomorrow to see if we can gather the enthusiasm together to get out there again.

Waiting for the cure

The end gable windows are still clamped and curing, We checked our test piece today and the glue works, but we will leave them for another 24 hours before painting and then hopefully fitted by the weekend.

Today it was quite busy. On marketplace a local was giving away some wood, so we arranged to pick up this morning, after that it was a little cool so we decided to wait until the afternoon before starting some essential preparation work.  

All the other windows are installed now, except for that polycarbonate one in the middle, which will be retained tomorrow with some wood strips, the amazing thing was that a single 2' x 4' piece of polycarbonate was good for two end gable windows and the remaining piece fits the gap exactly, another one of those sizing coincidences on this job.

Some of the wood we picked up this morning is perfect for the top retainers for the patio door windows, so they were cut to size and painted today, along with other essential pieces to be installed before the "final four" windows. In addition, an assortment of pressure treated 2x4 for free was very welcome for filling in some of the holes, when they are all done we know that we will be starting with the door.

"Put wood int' 'ole"

In addition, the greenhouse has some residents now, the peppers are now squatting which would never have happened if we had fitted a door.

Bring all the clamps

After making a cardboard template of the gable end and test fitting on all four, we cut some polycarbonate with the measured angle and created frames on both sides, the wood being attached to the plastic using exterior carpet glue, very sticky stuff, bought from a marketplace vendor for two whole dollars.

They will be clamped while the glue cures, we may add a couple of screws later.

 Like we said, all the clamps.

We noticed that they look like old fashioned tennis raquet heads in the straightening frame.

Window Ledges

A couple of days when a lot has been done but nothing feels like it has changed.

Although yesterday we agreed that we are getting there and that is very evident by the dwindling amount of materials we have left, we originally bought a box of 900 screws, 3" long, and we have perhaps 40 left, we estimate there are over 1100 screws in the structure so far, and not finished yet.

The trim work on the left hand side is done and painted with half of the exterior stain that remains, we probably have an inch or so left in the tin, it will all be used. As you can see, there are short lengths of trim to be added on the bottom windows, they're not really needed, but we will add them, same is true around the big "patio door" windows, lots of little jobs and everything needs a lick of paint.

Added yesterday were the window ledges inside.

The inside needs painting, we have some of that interior latex left, so that will do, we will painting the window ledges, which are pressure treated wood, with the base color, we have some of that left and it is "good stuff" and we do not want to waste it.

The definition of "good stuff" is oil based stain that smells unhealthy and cannot be cleaned up with soap and water, nowadays the stuff they call paint thinner does not work either, we think there is an inch of that stain left in the tin and it will be used so that we only take empty containers to the disposal yard.

Over half a century has passed...

In the last 24 hours my mind has been tormented by a thousand thoughts from every possible angle imaginable, but the overall theme of those thoughts has been happiness.

It was way back in time, perhaps 1969 or more probably, 1970. I came down the stairs on the morning of my birthday and my mum and dad had managed in the previous weeks to hoodwink me into the belief that the object I saw before me was unobtainable. 

Apparently it wasn't.

Yet, this story is not about that, it is about this :

It is my birthday on Wednesday and yesterday I was looking on marketplace and by odd chance (because I was not searching for it) found a later example of the same object. 

I suppose I should reveal what I'm going on about :

The bike that mum and dad bought me over half a century ago was a Raleigh Chopper, the MK1 version, nicknamed by Raleigh at the time as "The Hot One" and over the years they released the MK2 and this of many variants that they called the MK3 which would have been on sale between 2004 and 2012, with some old stock being available up to 2018.

There is a however, the above article which does not have the correct seat arrangement for a MK3, and it is either from a MK1 or MK2 or possibly a third party reproduction seat, regardless, there are no complaints here and my ongoing mission will be to improve this old bike as well as I can.

I will be repeating what I did all those years ago, polishing my chopper once again!

Less than an hour on an overcast day.

There was a reluctance to go outdoors this morning, it had rained overnight and the sky was overcast and perhaps threatening another shower or two, we looked at each other and agreed we should try it for half an hour.

It was a bit chilly, but extra layers and moving around helped and in a short period of time, probably 45 minutes, we installed both the sliding windows in the upper half of the left side, as has been typical of the entire greenhouse build, dimensions worked with us and it was as though we had planned it.

There we have it, the view from indoors which is now mostly sheltered from the elements. There are holes to fill of course, but we left it at this today, the windows slide as they should, the frames installed easily and we were pleased with the job and happy to go indoors for a hot chocolate.

Another photo from outside :

There are many small jobs available for the next few days, trim work, installing the rest of the "nailing strips" which are actually screwed in, fitting some wood around the periphery of the sliding windows, creating polycarbonate triangular frames for the gable ends, fixing a few leaks and also some painting.

All of that to be done before we fit the door.

One Half

Another day, and as predicted, the mirror image pair of windows went in a lot smoother than our previous effort, oddly though, time drifted away in exactly the same manner.

The upper windows are similar but are double the width and each one features a sliding window which will be great for temperature control. We decided to leave them for another day and finished off by starting to fill in the upper frame with two of our 5x4 pieces, rain is forecast overnight so we are not sure if we will complete this tomorrow.

One Quarter

The remaining windowless space is obtaining windows.

We have lost track of the terminology, I think at one point we were calling this the back side but it makes more sense to call it the left side. This was an example today of how it takes time to learn a method, in theory tomorrow, on the mirror image, we should take less time, especially as we have already cut some of the wood for what we will call the lower left side of the left side. 

This is what the lower right side of the left side looks like now :

Fatigue is a strange thing, at one point a job that should have taken a minute or so took almost fifteen, I would say it was a simple job, but most of the individual elements are simple jobs, there was a moment where too much time was spent and we both knew it.

However, after that annoying moment, the two windows went in very quickly.

New Post, like the old one

The "centre" post has been added with the two 4x4 pieces for the lower window frames, I use quotes there because all our tolerances have stacked up and if we measure the centre at top and bottom, the post does not look true to the greenhouse frame, and the visual is everything.

As with all the construction on this project, there is always a compromise and somewhere along the way the base dimension on this side has not quite matched the top measurement, so the visual lines of the other side of the greenhouse have been used and "relatively" it is square.

Hey, it's a $427.91 greenhouse!

The Final Wall - planning stage

The last two patio windows were installed today, so that leaves a hole to put a door in and the final wall windows, as with the first wall of windows, planning is required :

The hole measures approximately 140" x 73.25" after we add the last length of 4x4 tomorrow which will, in effect, be the lower window sill for the bottom row.

The vertical stack up for the fixed windows on the bottom row will be 33.25" + 4" which means that we have 73.25 - 37.25 = 36" gap. The upper sliding windows will mount on a 34.5" width with approx 1.5" flange all around, nice and easy to mount. This means that we have 1.50" to fill along the top of the window, a very convenient number for a 2x4.

We live in hope.

Painted and then around the bend.

We painted the frames yesterday and removed the masking tape this morning, then we installed the middle window that we had obtained from a local chap called Sunny on marketplace, it was a heavy window but we wrangled it into our frame quite easily and screwed it in, there will be some trim work to be done on the outside and inside. 

In addition another large sheet of 34" x 76" patio door glass was moved over from the work area using our strap system and safely installed even though we are running out of places to use clamps.

The layout of the windows for the back wall has been mapped out and it looks like we will have enough wood in stock to complete the greenhouse. It may be desired to buy a couple of correct sized pieces for various trim work, however, we will attempt to resist as we know money can always be better used by buying beers.

Front Side windows all in.

Today the reasonable weather continued and we soldiered on and completed the first side windows, at the end of the process we acted like a well organised and tolerant team, that is the way most things have improved during the course of the build.

The next stage involves lots of masking tape and brown paint, more good weather on the wish list and the forecast indicates that we will be in luck. The following is an "artists impression" of what it should look like after we have finished painting, although even the AI program missed a spot here and there.

The 2x4 wood supply is dwindling although we still have a good stock of 1x2 and 4x4 material, we may need to be creative on the back side of the greenhouse, however, we still have budget left, plus from one day to the next you never know what will pop up on marketplace.