Salvaged Greenhouse Complete!

Our salvaged greenhouse, described in Salvaged Greenhouse Build Raises Urban Farm to New Heights is now "complete", looking fabulous and functioning. As we built it without plans, our vision grew with the project and resulted in a 12x16 foot structure with a soaring height of 15 feet! Its a bit of a cathedral and certainly makes a statement in our aspirational urban micro farm yard. Overall it suits us perfectly and we wouldn't change a thing, however we did gain some wisdom along the way.  Advice for other do-it-yourselfers attempting a similar type of project includes:

1. Consider and plan out the pitch of the roof with regards to install and maintenance. After building a template for the truss, we prefabricated nine trusses. With two people, we managed to lift and install them, using a couple of tall ladders, and the greenhouse frame for support. The install was relatively easy. The challenge came in retrospect once we saw the final structure come to life, that perhaps our roof pitch was too steep. It looks good however there will be challenges for maintenance and painting. 
2. Prepare the vintage windows and doors by cleaning, and/or stripping and sanding if needed prior to construction. The power washer really worked wonders for this messy job. As did the use of painting drop cloths and tarps to catch all the paint chips that you don't want getting in your garden. Let the wood frames dry out thoroughly in the sun prior to painting.
3. If you can, paint the vintage window and door frames prior to construction. Although it can be easier to paint once constructed the challenge for us was with the height of the project. As the greenhouse grew in height, it became trickier to reach the soaring heights for an effective paint job. We used a solid colour, oil-latex formula House and Fence Wood Stain by Behr , tinted white and bought at Home Depot. We bought the Husky Gravity Feed Hvlp Spray Gun from Home Depot and used this with our existing air compressor to apply the wood stain. This worked great for the initial two to three coats, and was really fun to use. However, for a nice finished look it was necessary to apply additional paint coats with brush application. The final application was difficult due to the height of the project making us wish we had at least painted all the trusses before  install.  

We used as much salvaged material as possible to achieve the weathered, finished look we were after. This saved money as some of the material was free on Facebook Marketplace, in addition to some side of the road discarded finds. In total we used 23 windows of various sizes and two doors which we puzzled together to make three walls. The back wall was made from reclaimed 1x6 boards to form a patterned solid surface. As this wall  backs up against a fence, a tall cedar hedge, and is not hit by direct sunlight this plan made sense for build site. The solid back wall also works very well as the backdrop for our salvaged potting table and for tool storage. 

The new material that we purchased for this project is as follows:

• To erect the structure we used ORIGLE Post Bases, 6x6 and ORIGLE Pergola Brackets, 6x6  to hold the salvaged beams together while adding an attractive decorative finish. During the spray painting process these brackets got covered with white paint speckles which could not be easily removed with paint thinner or scraping. Instead we applied Tremclad Rust Paint Revive & Protect, Water-Based Technology in Flat Black from Home Depot, to renew the look, and this came out better than expected. 

• For the roof panels we used Teabelle Polycarbonate Clear Greenhouse Panels Kit  for safety and ease of install. 

• For final touches, we installed the CRIRY Solar Barn Light  above the French doors, which keeps the light on from dawn to dusk .

For the final decorative touches, we used several vintage and upcycled finds that you can explore in what will be the third blogpost on this topic, coming soon.