Building the greenhouse

I mentioned in an earlier post that I had bought a 12' x 8' second hand greenhouse and I am going to cut it down to 8' x 8'.

7 of the frame members were 12' or so long and I cut them roughly down to size to make it easier to transport them back to Anglesey.

The frame was pretty grubby from age and also storage over winter, so I cleaned everything down, ready to erect. That took pretty much a full day to do, but looked really good afterwards. 

Then I had to adapt the “long” members by cutting them down to the new 4 pane length and replicating the end mounting holes in each piece. Not difficult, just really careful measuring and cutting etc. I found a metal cutting disc in the angle grinder was by far the easiest way to cut them.

I got the base down nice and square and level and then plugged and screwed it to the slabs and sleeper.

Then I laid everything out on the lawn and worked out what was from gables, sides and roof. It all went together pretty easily even though all of my carefully referenced numbers on each joint had faded away! It definitely helped having a 10mm socket in the drill. Much easier than when I took it apart with a socket set and spanner!

It was great to see the structure up and the “vision” coming to life. I think 8’ x 8’ is the perfect size for my garden - it feels significantly bigger than my old 8’ x 6’ one with plenty of room for staging etc.

And with the glazing finished a couple of days later, it looked really smart. I'm so pleased with how it looks after all the cleaning - almost like new!

I had another big cleaning session to tidy up all of the bits and pieces that I got as part of the deal and have started to organise the space and get some planting going.