I blame the illness! ...the MCD! I may be going in a lot of different directions simultaneously, making this piece of art, or that jewelry item, pet collar, recycled shopping bag, decorated cookie, construction project (like a greenhouse, no less!), garden bed.... etc., but apparently blogging about those bursts of creativity isn't one of my symptoms! I have no excuses, but I'm in denial about there being any treatment for such procrastination. Let's move on then, shall we?
I just learned a new term today. It's the acronym 'NaBloPoMo' which stands for National Blog Posting Month. The idea was developed some time ago, stating that somehow it was a good idea to challenge yourself and post a blog each and every day for the period of a whole month, namely November (though it could be any given month, at the blogger's discretion). What kind of insanity is that? I dismissed it as being some kind of ridiculousness that only people with NO LIVES would take on. Then the more I got to thinking about it, I decided I should take a similar challenge, but attempt to enter a blog post at least once a week, rather than daily. To me, that's challenging enough! (To be honest, if I went back over the course of the past year and wrote about all the creative things I'd been working on, I could probably fill a month with daily entries! But HEY, let's not get carried away. Once a week is plenty.)
So how about some news of the most recent project? Here's the story of that greenhouse!
One day this past fall, when my parents were visiting, we got the wild idea to build a small shed to store my garden tools in. I was only half serious about it, but on a whim, I asked my neighbors if they had any bits and pieces of lumber left over from a project they recently finished of adding on a screened room to the back of their house. They did, in fact, have a nice haul of things they didn't want anymore. There was a platform of 2x8s (or maybe they were 2x10s) that supported their old hot tub and two sets of 'grids' that were part of an old deck, made of 2x6s. There were also a set of wooden stairs and a bunch of short pieces of treated 2x6s as well. So they were nice enough to deliver all the pieces over to our yard, and in short order, we had started a foundation to my garden shed.
That's the foundation in the back, and some of the free lumber in front. I am building on a slight slope, so the right side is made from the larger 'hot tub foundation' and the left side was pieced together with the shallower lumber. It was at this point that I got the bright idea to made one side a greenhouse, while the other side remained the original tool shed idea. The project grew to be a bit more complicated than originally intended, but that's what I do! Always complicating things more and more, so each change results in being more creative than the previous draft, IMHO. Our free wood was soon used up, and the budget for the rest of the project also grew. Thank God for parents who give you building materials as a Christmas gift!
Soon I had the plywood floor in place, and one wall configuration built. That's it, laying out on the floor, below.
Then the large window openings got divided into thirds, and the roof needed extra lumber to create a series of lips that the corrugated panels could attach to.
The greenhouse half of the shed has a clear roof, and the other side got a roof made of plywood, covered in shingles that match my other cute shed, that I built a couple of years ago.
The rest of the walls were enclosed in siding.
The top of the solid roof extends slightly over the ridge, covering the top of the corrugated panels.
...then comes the window coverings...
...and trims galore...
...and a colored door!
A few special aesthetic touches were added...
I got the outside finished just in time to fill the shed with plants before the weather got colder, and even though the inside isn't quite done, the plants are happy to be there!
On cold nights, I can turn on a small heater or a light. It's magical when the light is on!
And did I mention it has a loft?
This is me, sitting on the loft platform, pondering my next project. I'll see y'all in about a week!
