The Greenhouse Renewal Project

 Ah we meet again reader, and as long as I have remembered how to write a bit of html copy and paste I welcome you to another gloriously pictorial entry of Stu's blog.

I was going to add a TL;DR here but I couldn't remember if I was in the put it before or after camp..anyway you don't really need one because it's just words and pictures about building a new greenhouse

 So the story behind this, no not the first greenhouse and gardening blog entry a couple of years ago 

Note 1 Its actually nine years ago now so i suppose the original reclaimed mish mash of timber and second hand greenhouse doesn't owe me anything

 is my need to grow stuff to post pictures of on insta.. um to grow stuff for Sunday dinners and the like. So first you grow yourself some offsprings (optional) and a puppers (less optional) who can then help build a new raised deck with a greenhouse type structure atop of it

We had a few storms through last winter which caused some damage to the panels on my greenhouse but to be fair I had already noticed that the partially raised structure that was previously holding it up 30odd inches above terra firma was looking a bit like a condemned pier at low tide. 

Note 2 If you squinted a bit and ignored the lack of any accompanying coastal features and a hastily deployed axle stand

	The Calm After The Storms
Click thumbnails to enlarge...

I'm not sure I picked the best time of year to do this really, I mean there probably isn't a right time for major garden reconstruction work, good times for pruning roses, planting perennials, picking leafy greens, peppers and spring onions for a Mexican themed barbecue or adding well rotted manure to your plot yes, that sort of stuff is well covered by the weekend magazine supplements,  various social media 'influencers'  and sponsored by garden centres, Aldi, Tesco and various big shite spreading organisations but pausing everything horticultural for nearly two months doesn't seem to fit anywhere obvious on the yearly gardening calender.  Alan Titchmarsh and co   seem to tackle garden makeovers whenever they feel like it for the local single dad charity fundraising champion or poor little orphaned Milly who can't get down the uneven cobble path past the nettles to the stagnant 'fish' pond at the foster grandparents ex council semi with her club foot, anxiety, allergies and noise cancelling headphones. It doesn't seem to matter to them if it's mid July or the first week of January when they arrange tactile Mediterranean plants around tranquil seating areas or install stainless steel water features and sprinkle half a ton of chipped bark over the herbaceous borders to cover the wiring for them and the solar powered retractable roof pergola with attached sail shade..which may or may not be a real product.. 

Note 3 Thinking about it I'd better hide add a wider disclaimer here: Ahem. Persons and specific circumstances mentioned above most probably haven't featured in actual episodes..yet

As it happened I started ordering timber and stuff the end of February, mainly because there seemed to be a fair amount of stock everywhere of everything I thought I'd need and a few special offers on. I bought the deck boards, joists and screws as a kit from 'edecks' on ebay  supposedly to cover 16ft by 8ft, this was cheap admittedly and was billed as reject so a few minor imperfections, discolouration etc. However It was awful quality, so some was sent back and replaced with, well, more that was just as bad. Good thing I wasn't using it as intended and I'm not shy about leaving scathing feedback 

Note 4 Or showcasing their quality product here.. Who me? Salty? Not at all

	!!Quality Timber From EDECKS!!
Click thumbnails to enlarge...

Normally when embarking on major projects I have a pretty precise (fully costed) plan with detailed drawings, cutting lists etc. This time the only thing I was fairly certain about was the footprint, 7'6" square as an absolute maximum and there needed to be a cut out corner to allow clear access to my shed roof storage space. To be honest I hadn't even decided which way the thing would be facing when deliveries started arriving. My thinking was roof needs to overhang and overlap so four 8ft by 2ft 6 clear corrugated pvc sheets (from Varico). Deck 8ft square plus some for steps, 'balcony', fencing etc. less a bit for the growing area inside and the cut out, 16ft by 8ft will easily be more than I need. My reasoning being that any timber left over would be turned into garden furniture which I already have 'orders' for, turns out I'm not as good at overestimating as I thought so fulfilling those orders may have to wait.  For the greenhouse frame it was a case of order a f!*k ton of 4X2 on the same basis from 'We sell timber' 

Note 5 After the mop debacle I tend to pay attention to suppliers names but as it happens this timber yard is fairly local to me anyway and I've used them before

	Clearing The Decks
Click thumbnails to enlarge...

Time to start clearing the area. Step 1 remove old bird netting frame and fencing from the growing area then lift old greenhouse onto it in case i could sell it as is (I couldn't) and to keep some of the stuff still in it like the shelving and potting bench marginally less wet than outside this also entailed disconnecting the electric socket which id recently added thinking I might be powering a heated propagator and pulling back wiring for two poe cctv cameras which all ran in the same conduit straight through the greenhouse frame and out the other side..because of course it did.

	Measure Twice, Mind the Prybar
Click thumbnails to enlarge... .

Step 2, which would in reality be about step 32. Build the deck that everything new sits on. Actually this part is relatively easy, measure twice (minding the dogs paws) cut once (minding the dogs snout), fix down rinse and repeat (minding various other canine appendages) until you find yourself standing on a nice level looking deck.. or it would be if it wasn't for step 35 ish which is build some stairs up to it whose whereabouts because of my unusually reckless start building and hope a plan comes together approach was still tbc.

	Better Step Up
Click thumbnails to enlarge...

For a while I thought they'd be in the back corner between the shed and the greenhouse but this would mean another door out onto the growing area or a long walk around the garden to get to it. In the end it made more sense to put a water butt there and seeing as rain has to flow into it the roof design became slightly clearer..less up in the air and the new steps got put on the same side as the originals although they face up the garden now and have an extra tread. 

Note 6 Adding the steps involved a lot more extra steps..namely taking a chainsaw to a 20 odd ft high tree whose roots were beginning to lift the slab where I needed to put them

 The steps like everything else are decking board and 4x2, the strings being 8x2 because its a handy multiple of 4x2. 

Step 3  Build greenhouse. Now I was seriously wishing I had some actual plans, or at the very least a better mental picture of the overall finished product. making what is in effect window framing out of 95mm x 45mm timber on the fly isn't ideal. 

Note 7 It's still metric over here despite brexit, but it'd be 'rabbeting the twobyfour' for those reading state-side 

I'd bought a 20 pack of polycarb twin wall sheets for the side glazing, which confusingly enough are actually 4ft x 2ft even though the blurb implied a slightly smaller metric equivalent and these would sit above a 'dwarf wall' made with tongue and groove loglap (barrelboard) that I'm pretty fond of using now whenever there is an outside project because it matches the shed and garden furniture. Posh git eh? maybe I am learning from Titchmarsh.

	It's All In The Detail
Click thumbnails to enlarge...

The window detail part is a one inch deep by half inch wide rebate ripped out of the 'correct' corners of the timber framing with a table saw for the 'glass' to sit in way too much on the spot mental gymnastics here for my liking 

Note 8 More like measure 14 times, mark, check which way is up, coral dog well out of the way, measure again, set table saw, measure, coral dog again remembering to lock door this time else he opens it, double check which way is up, then cut twice

 and then beading tacked in to secure it. The beading being the offcut timber strips ripped out from the corners..which I totally planned for in advance and wasn't just a bit of blind luck that I realised I could use them for that before they got binned.  For the lower part the loglap also sits in the same rebate as the glazing so its similarly inset but the noggin above it has an additional slot cut in its underside to accept the tongue of the uppermost piece.

	Build?Erect?Whatever Walls
Click thumbnails to enlarge...

The general idea was to make each 'wall' up on the ground then stand them upright which seems to be the normal modus operandi according to my social feeds of related diy greenhousery shenanigans when erecting rather than building if you know what I mean. This would probably have worked better if I hadn't decided to be clever and used a single upright at each corner..and one side wasn’t built on the strip wall that’s about 9 inches higher..and there wasn't an 18inch corner cut out..thinking about it I was more building than erecting which explains a lot. I'd left enough room on the front balcony for a door to swing open outwards but in a rare moment of inspiration I realised a sliding affair of some sort would be an ideal solution taking much less space while giving me a wider opening so I splashed out on sliding barn door fittings without really knowing how I'd be using them outside/inside? Would there even be enough room under the roof for the track and rollers to fit? etc. Also around this point Id decided where I wanted one of the opening windows, sitting just above the potting bench for easy transferral of young plants to the outside growing area the other opener would be on the opposite side, probably, a plus side of scratchbuilding means you can wing it easily change your mind as you go. Once the walls were up I made the door  and fitted it on the new track which fortunately didn't need more space directly above it than was available.

 As for the roof well as you'll know if you read the shed renewal project the main cause of that was an old corrugated lid so naturally I was a bit dubious about using anything like it again, granted 0.9-1.3mm clear pvc is an entirely different thing to the frighteningly heavy reclaimed industrial coverings I used 30odd years ago but nevertheless I've seen plenty of 'projects' recently where pvc just looks bloody awful or where it flaps around at the first sign of a gentle breeze. I'm hoping these issues are the result of folks lack of ability or sheer incompetence with anything diy.

	Hoping To Keep a Lid On It
Click thumbnails to enlarge...

I ordered the thickest (still thin if you ask me) and most expensive 1.3mm gauge sheets, made sure the overlap, the roof angle and positioning of supporting beams was well in excess of the requirements, used the recommended number and type of fixings and put polystyrene eaves fillers on every beam. So far I'm pleasantly surprised by the result and it looks and performs as advertised in the glossy brochures rather than something Shifty Bob Murphy nailed together over a back alley after 3 cans of special brew on a Saturday afternoon. In our case it wasn't of course a nice relaxing Saturday afternoon when we started fixing the roof more a Monday evening when beating the start of a forecasted downturn in the weather meant finishing up well after 2am on Tuesday morning.

	Windows Update
Click thumbnails to enlarge...

Glazing the sides and making the frames for the opening windows which are also rebated on the outsides so they sit flush in the same channels as everything else would mostly complete the structure itself. There were a few alterations here and there, 2 window panels above the door became 3 because somehow I forgot the glazing panels were 2ft wide and therefore filling the two aforementioned 26inch wide holes with them wasn't going to happen.

	Bits and (Non Shifty) Bobs
Click thumbnails to enlarge...

Finishing touches like the window stays removing some of the temporary bracketry and connecting up a new water butt to the guttering and downpipe provided a bit of light relief. I even managed to organise myself enough to get a few seed trays started.

	Net Results..Not Gross?
Click thumbnails to enlarge... .

Step 4 

Note 9 Really? Step4? are we still counting?

 With beans actually beginning to show signs of life I needed to figure out how to create a better version of the fenced in gated and netted growing part of the garden. The fencing and balcony railings is deckboards and 4X2.. and 2X2 made out of 4X2. The 'doors' 

Note 10 Or should I call them gates? hmm..bit of a conundrum really..see how easily I got distracted?

 are framed with deckboards cut in halfish with loglap at the bottom for aesthetic reasons next to the greenhouse and are inlayed with some of Aldis finest garden mesh procured on a I knew it would come in handy basis a while ago when it was was sporting a 50% off sticker. I wanted to make it easier to get to the compost bins and in and out from the top patio through the middle of the rose arches so I decided on an extra 'door' there in addition to one at the end of the greenhouse balcony. I've actually re-re-used some of the original deck for this one and for some of the thicker bottom netting kickboards. The rest of the netting frame is mainly unused lath which I generously offered to 'dispose of' after it was left in our shared alleyway by some cowboy builders who tried to bodge a neighbours roof. Its all covered in a general purpose black 1" nylon garden/pond/bird net the same type I used previously.

	Powered Up Not Through
Click thumbnails to enlarge...

There's more room between the fence and the back of the greenhouse this time so the conduit run is outside the main frame closer to deck level with a tee off to feed inside with the power coming from the shed. We ended up replacing niglon connector blocks in junction boxes with a proper fuseboard in there a while ago when I decided it needed wiring a bit more robustly, amongst other things sockets were replaced, circuits were isolated and an emergency stop button was added.. I say fuseboard, there's actually a split load RCD consumer unit down there now so everything has its own breaker. Inside the greenhouse there's a double outdoor weatherproof socket so I can power a tube/frost heater plus the propagator if I need to and now that this years main growing season has finished I've also wired in some led light bars billed as 'grow lights' controlled by a similarly weatherproof switch fitted just inside the sliding door.

	All Finished Ready to Grow
Click thumbnails to enlarge...

I'm writing this after the first summer season post build if you like so as before I'm adding a few pictures of this years crop.

	Growin..
Click thumbnails to enlarge...

 I kept things fairly simple so tomatoes cucumbers, peppers, a few potatoes that self set and runner beans which grew on temporary bamboo canes this year,  I ran out of time before I could build a more permanent structure but tbf I may stick with the bamboo next year too because I like the idea of being able to move crops around.

	Growing..
Click thumbnails to enlarge...

We have done exceptionally well really with most things considering the lateish start but I decided it was a bit too much to ask geraniums and the like to start from seed so I bought flowers for hanging baskets and tubs this year as young plant plugs from Aldi 

Note 11 come to think of it a lot of the screws,brackets plus gloves,bean seeds, plant tags, multipurpose compost and even the potting bench,water butt kit and some of the tools we used to build this came from the aisles of Aldi.

 

	Grown
Click thumbnails to enlarge...

So there you go reader, well done if you made it this far down the page..probably should have mentioned its a very long post about a greenhouse and put a TL;DR in after all.