We Have Achieved Greenhouse!

Some time ago I wrote about starting a greenhouse project.  The floor was complete on April 24th…of last year.  Then things happened and life went on, and the greenhouse project was abandoned for a while.  But now, it’s complete!

North East corner of the Greenhouse

It’s sturdy as heck, and quite a bit taller than I needed, but I can hang things from the inside rafters and my husband won’t whack his head if he goes inside, which is nice.  We bought the roofing material at a greenhouse supply place in Aurora, which saved us tons of money compared with buying pre-sized panels from a horticulture place.  Seriously, we saved probably 50%, even if you factor in having to drive 45 miles one way instead of 25. And the place in Aurora even cut them to size for us, so there was literally no benefit to buying the pre-cut panels.  Very weird.  But now I remember why I don’t go to the horticulture place much!

Inside the greenhouse, shelves along the south wall.

The windows are salvage from an old mansion down on the riverfront in Vancouver.  My folks found them at a VFW rummage sale for a few bucks a piece, and bought something like 20 of them, with the idea of using them in their own house.  Well, they turned out not to be right for their purposes, so we got them.  They’re wood framed, double paned, but not “energy efficient” so they don’t keep the solar heat out, though they do keep the heat in the greenhouse nicely.

Greenhouse door, ajar. It opens out, of course.

The door is an old sliding glass door off our old house, which was replaced when we moved out because, well, frankly it sucked.   Since my parents own our old house, we get most of the cast offs, and they go into projects like this!  Todd used a piano hinge as a closure, and then crafted a handle for it out of a piece of wood.  Super cool.

The floor is also cast offs from our old house; the main portion is bricks that used to be the floor of our gazebo area, and the outer edge is cinder blocks that were part of some raised beds.   The inside shelves are partly salvaged lumber, partly new lumber, and strong enough for either of us to stand on.  Can’t imagine the plants will get THAT heavy!

Shelves along the north wall, and the east wall.

There’s adequate storage space under the shelves for all the pots I have hanging around, and for the implements and things that seem to pile up.  Hopefully this means I’ll be able to overwinter some of my more tender plants, like the pineapple sage, and maybe have some winter veggies this year!

We will be moving the quince tree which is just to the east of the greenhouse, and way too close.  We weren’t really thinking greenhouse when we put the tree there!  But we’ll wait until fall, after it goes dormant again, to dig it up and transplant it somewhere more convenient.   And eventually we’ll paint the greenhouse to match the house, but we’ll wait until we get the rabbit hutch and kitchen trailer done, so we can paint those and the chicken coop and everything all at once.

And at some point, we’ll be putting gutters on both the chicken coop and the greenhouse, and installing a couple more rain barrels so that I don’t have to go far to get to water for the plants, and so I won’t have to hook up to our crazy-expensive city water to do it.   And Todd has plans to build me a potting bench out under the west edge of the greenhouse, under an overhang and up against the arborvitae.   I think he’s afraid I’m going to get dirt on the floor of his new greenhouse…

Greenhouse floor.

Greenhouse, looking at the east end.