While standing on the deck one day recently, I came up with a solution to my problem. I could build a roof over this spot! I scribbled and schemed and measured, and took inventory of my stash of salvaged treasures, and I came up with this:
Let's start at the beginning, and I will show you how it all came together. (Click HERE if you want to go to a post that shows you how the greenhouse itself was built.)
This is what the spot behind the greenhouse looked like right before we started construction. (It's a mess, I know.)
Son-in-law and I moved all the junk, he cut down the weeds and raked, I stacked empty pots and relocated a cute little Black Rat Snake, and soon the spot was ready for us to get started.
Part of the planning for this was to make best use of materials, with as little waste as possible. The roofing I chose comes in sheets that are 8-feet long, so we had to carefully calculate where to place the support columns.
The shop vac was there because we used it to suck the thunderstorm water out of the holes.
This is the Lowes shelf tag on the polycarbonate roof panels that we used for this project.
Speaking of columns, I gave you a peek at one of them in yesterday's post.
I have had these for a while, holding on to them, waiting for a project to come along to use them. (I love acorns and oak leaves! It's a huge coincidence that these columns match the greenhouse's iron storm door almost exactly.)
(old photo to show you the door)
It took some fiddling to get the columns plumb and in the right spots, so the roof beam would be level and square to the building. The ground in this location slopes about 15 inches, so the column on the far corner has a raised concrete base. (That's the concrete form that you see right now.)
To support the main beam along the 20-foot run from corner post to corner post, I had another pair of salvaged cast iron columns on hand ... these columns have ROSES on them!
Once the columns and the main beam were in place, progress really got rolling and things happened fast. (This is what it looked like when we left on our vacation, with about half of the roof rafters in place.)
When we got home, I took my morning coffee and went outside and looked down from the deck and saw that my new covered greenhouse porch was completely finished!
The smoked polycarbonate roof barely impacts the light that comes into the greenhouse itself, and it should keep whatever is under it protected from rain and the fallout from the cedar tree.
I see that roof has already caught a few cedar needles.
Now I have a protected spot to work and to store things ... twenty feet long and seven feet wide.
Once we are past this current wave of heat and high humidity, I hope to get out there to organize all the crap and to build in a potting bench. I also have to stabilize the water hydrant, and decide what to do about flooring this space. For now, though, I plan to just stare at it and appreciate our Son-in-law's fine workmanship. He did a great job interpreting my scribbles, working with salvaged materials in an unconventional way, and bringing my design to life!
