Plan B, or is it C ?

We had meant to keep the concrete block wall that was existing between the garage side and the green house side.  A little investigation uncovered deterioriating morter and futher prodding showed us that the whole wall was built without a hint of rebar. The holes in the blocks were stuffed with newspapers dated 1951.  DH leaned on a bit and it shifted and that was all it took. Now, that wall is coming down to be rebuilt. On the plus side it gives us the option to put in a barn style sliding door that will make it pretty easy to move large plants, loads of soil, shelving etc. in and out.

Here is the offending wall and a few of my salvaged doors and windows.

I got a great deal on a massive work table and an industrial exhaust fan at the auction Saturday night, I'll try and get pictures posted soon.

Things are starting to go up !

First, the building inspector doggies check with the builder and decide construction can go ahead. What a relief !

Then, the old roof over the garage part has to come off to make way for new framing and a new roof over that half of the garage and the greenhouse.

We are using bits and pieces of old metal roofing and siding for the roof. Since I have such an odd lot of stuff we laid it out like a patchwork quilt on purpose. I like my "roof of many colors". Did you expect it to be made of glass ? Most greenhouses are. But here in North Texas, we have two things to worry about with a green house --- Heat and Hail. We get hail every spring, from pea sized to soft ball sized. People who live in hail free zones can't imagine balls of ice the size of your fist raining down but it happens here with disheartening regularity.  We had polycarbonate panels on our chicken house for light, one hail storm and that was money down the drain. Those poly panes shredded like wet kleenex !  It will be much less trouble to keep this shed style green house warm in the winter than it will be to cool it in the summer (and spring and fall LOL). We will have one entire south facing wall of windows and then windows on two of the remaining 3 walls and believe me it will be plenty of light !  Big black plastic water barrels will provide radiant heating in the winter.
So, with the old roof off new supports go up and then the roof. Construction at last !

Don't try this at home !

The first picture is a load of lumber we bought at a local auction. It is "seconds" meaning some pieces have minor damage, bark, or are curved. I priced long lumber for rafters at the home stores. Once you get past 10-12 feet it gets really expensive. Our estimate at the home store was nearly $800 before sales tax. We paid $245. for this load.  We can work around the blemishes, and we won't be doing finish grade stuff with it anyway.

The next bunch of pictures are tree removal (duh !). I've said it before and I'll say it again, this was SCARY AS HELL and I'll never do it ourselves again if I can talk him out of it. I know my husband was raised to be independant and self reliant. He just doesn't remember that he doesn't have his dad, uncles or cousins helping him; just his 5'1" tall 53 year old wife.

The sound of a large tree splitting is frightening, the thump of it hitting the ground is terrifying. My job was to back the tractor up to keep tension on the ropes to guide the fall. I am so short I can only reach the pedals if I teeter on the front of the seat and I need both feet to stomp the breaks hard enough to stop the thing.   Holy crap, have I mentioned I was scared ??

I know I am going to hear from the tree people who object to removing big trees. Well, me too. HOWEVER these are what the locals call "piss elms" and they are weak trees that grow fast. These are dropping major limbs in every wind storm. I call them widow makers. They also make millions of seeds, which blow in the wind, hit the roofs, slide down and drop to the ground and germinate. Which is why they are so close to buildings. No one in their right mind would plant one on purpose, especially right next to a building.

It seems like for weeks all we did was destroy things, when were we ever going to build anything ?

The order of operations....

My dear husband works 40-60 hour weeks with 20 hr. minimum commute time. He usually works every other Saturday, and sometimes every Saturday for a couple of weeks at a time. So, sometimes we chose the next job in the progression based on how much time we had, rather than what might have been the next logical step.....I know, I know, it's not standard construction proceedure. Oh, well.

Which is why we dug and poured foundation trenches so early in the game. It's also why it is sometimes worth the money to rent time saving equipment like this trencher. The whirling blades make short work of tight spaces and tree roots.

This machine requires a good bit of upper body strength to control and navigate !  We sold a pick up truck load of scrap metal for enough to pay for the rental of this and lunch. Not a bad trade, eh ?

Before CONstruction comes DEstruction..

So, we had old structure to remove. We started this when the weather we pretty cool, light jackets until you really got warmed up working cool. We miss those days now that it is upper 90's and low 100's every day.
After de-junking the scary old well house, most of it had to come down. Our first plan was to keep the dividing wall between the garage and the green house, We planned to replace the shelves you can see here with sturdy ones that don't tip forward and unload their contents to the floor.

Do we have a plan ? We don't need no stinking plans !!

This is what we're starting with. The structure behind the tree, to the left of the parking area. The tree has to go, and it's big.  There's another tree that has to come down as well. Tree felling is scary as hell and we were crazy to do it ourselves.  My hairy half fears nothing, and has a big tractor.  I don't suggest anyone do this themselves unless they've been trained for it and have safety equipment. Us, we were just lucky that the angels protect fools I guess. First we started tearing out the old well house. That round-ish thing on the left is the new well. It's temporary house is an old water cistern whose bottome has rusted out. Did I mention I am a scrap scrounging fool ? I like to say I am "green" and recycle, but I've been scrounging long before green was the thing to be. Once the greenhouse is built we'll recycle the concrete blocks we're tearing out in order to build the new green house into a new well house.  We have a general plan, or at least I thought we did when we started. The hairy half says he can see it in his head. I think I can see it in my head too, but I'm not sure were watching the same movie KWIM ?
A big part of the overall plan is to "do it on the cheap".  I don't have a big building budget and I don't want to dip into savings much. So I set out to convert some resources. First, gold is at an all time high, so I sold my class ring, another broken ring and dh tossed his class ring in as well (shhhh, don't tell his mom).  That was a good sized chunk of cash !  Next, we scared up all the scrap metal we could find. Bits of old fence, barn tin, dead appliances etc.  Sold that for scrap weight, and it was a medium sized chunk of change.  This, plus my saved up windows and stuff, was our seed - so to speak.

We're building a greenhouse !

I had a little greenhouse at our last house. It was made from a play house my brother in law had built and his kids had out grown it. It was just about the only thing I missed when we sold the house; and I've missed it for 10 years.  We've talked about it and talked about it. I've been saving bits and pieces in the loft of the barn for years to use in the greenhouse, someday.  Well, someday finally got here. We've decided to do it as a lean to against the barn we use for a garage, where there used to be a well house. The well went dry and a new well was drilled, and the old house fell into disrepair. But the well shaft is still there and clear enough to use for a drain.  I saved an old sink for years and years to use in the greenhouse, someday. I'm going to position it over the old well hole and have my water run down into it. The new well is near by so we can plumb water into the green house from it. The old well house was a dark, damp spooky place where junk went to hide and mulitply. But, it was somewhere to start.