Hubby’s Surprise: Building a New Greenhouse!

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Hello, dear friends! One day I came home from work and found my hubby outside building a new greenhouse for me! It all began with the snowstorm back in January…

The little makeshift mini greenhouse I’d put together with some bent electrical conduit and plastic clipped over it had crushed with the snow load…

We didn’t get all that much snow, either. It was around 4-5,” but still, there was enough snow to cause the whole thing to fall over.

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A new beginning with a new greenhouse

This is how far Mr. Ethereal got on the first day thinking through how this new greenhouse should look.

He watched several really informational videos on YouTube and from those he copied one design. If I find that video, I will link it here ~ especially since we didn’t film any of this build ourselves. 😉

I came home the next day and Hubby had put up all of the electrical conduit “ribs.” They were screwed down at the bottoms on either side of the 8′ width.

Oh, the dimensions of this new greenhouse are 8′ wide x 16′ long. These dimensions made it sooo much easier to buy 2×4’s for building this thing! We just needed 8′, 10′, and 16′ boards. Thankfully only four 16′ boards were needed! Two for the long sides and two for overhead (seen down below).

You should have seen us driving home with these guys slid-in through the back truck window and pushed all the way up to our front window! Hubby put a red flag on the overhanging ends hanging off the back of the truck tailgate.

There’s our man-of-the-hour, Hubby Charles! It was a fairly warm day when he was working on this first part of the greenhouse.

Another day I came home to part of the doorway being built! A pile of boards lay on the grass and some boards were up on the tables.

Hubby took a day to raise the right side of this greenhouse with small keystone bricks. We bought those on the same Lowe’s run where we picked up the boards. Since then, I’ve gone in and added bricks of various types along the back wall to block pests from getting underneath where the ground slopes away from the house and towards the fence.

Here’s an evening shot with the front doorway area complete with the overhead support beams.

Charles used half-round metal clips with flaps to screw down the conduit ribs to the overhead beams and to the side boards. Some of the boards were new but used as a drying rack as we painted Hardy board when Hubby was working on the patio fascia and soffit rebuild this winter.

I think this is a modification from the design he followed in the video he watched but maybe not.

He dropped the header of the doorway and back wall so the long 16′ beams could sit flush with the ribs smoothly clamping on overhead.

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Adding the heavy duty plastic cover

This part seemed to be really tough to do. It’s not like you can toss the plastic over the top of the greenhouse ribs. It took a minute to align the plastic from one side and then pull it up and over the “roof.” 😉

The front and rear plastic was installed first, then the main cover was added. Small PVC clips secured all the pieces onto the conduit.

We had some high straight winds come through before the latest round of cold weather in mid-February and the top got pulled right off! Clips went all over the garden but thankfully Hubby and I were outside at the time working and saw the whole thing.

This was the first time the plastic was put on.

A board has been added partway up both sides. This is where we can roll and clip up the plastic along the side so air can flow underneath. Hubby will be putting in a window at the back and some kind of fan to circulate air for our hot summers.

We will be buying shade cloth, too, which will be clipped on the top over the plastic to help keep this greenhouse cooler, too.

For winter, we are thinking about running electric out here, as well as finishing the big shed’s electric hookup, too. That’s another project. 🙂

Here you can see where the zippers were added to the doorway area. These stick-on zippers are FABULOUS! If you ever need zippers like this for a project, I highly recommend them. I like that you can unzip both to the same level then use small clips to hold the plastic “door” up overhead.

And a foggy day where the shed is basically done on Mr. Ethereal’s part.

Now I get to add 1/4″ hardware cloth all around the insides along the lower half and all along the floor. This is what I worked on this weekend! Two rolls of 3′ tall x 10′ hardware cloth was used and it covered the front (one side), around the corner and all the way down and just past the back corner.

I will need two more rolls for the opposite side and then more for the floor. We will be putting pea gravel down, too, along the walking pathways. At least that’s my thought right now.

And that’s it, friends! Hubby has moved on to making a new wider gate for our front fence rebuild. He’s been working on that project for the past couple of weekends around the second cold front.

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Thanks for stopping by and please leave me a comment on what you think about this greenhouse. Have you built one before? What projects are you working on right now?

See you again real soon!

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Big early spring hugs,