Laying the Foundations

Today is day one of really putting together the greenhouse and there was a moment this morning when I debated putting it off. Not out of sheer laziness because I'm actually quite excited to make a start, but because in true, irritably middle age fashion, I slept funny last night and my back is all out of sorts. On top of that the occasional stabbing pain in my side-breast area tells me that I'm probably developing another cyst. Faaaaantastic. I didn't want to lose the day, however, so after easing into things with some light grocery shopping and re-running the dishwasher (that didn't open its soap packet last night), I donned gloves and grabbed the electric screwdriver and set to work.

Okay, yes, I went against instructions and used the electric screwdriver, bad me. One of the multitude of ways in which my body is starting to fail me is in the beginnings of arthritis in my wrists, and actions such as repetitively turning something (like a screw) can be painful if the joints are already stiff. And doing something like this outside in winter, even on a less cold day, is only going to exacerbate everything.

I sited the greenhouse in the back between the house and the retaining wall. You can see that the property slopes and this is the case over the whole of the almost 3/4 acre plot, meaning that there is almost nowhere to put a structure that will be level. My choices were right in the back, way off on the western corner of the property far from the house and next to the street, or in the middle of the front lawn. Clearly the back of the house was best. So I cleared the area of leaves, and despite my enthusiasm for the leaf-blower I received for Christmas, it really was the good old-fashioned rake that did the trick best. Then I measured out some weed blocking material and staked it down, doing my best to keep the rectangle aligned with the house.

Then I could move on to assembling the actual frame, and it only took me about an hour to realize I had done something wrong in the first step and had to go back and re-do part of it. However I'll say this for me, I tend to assess things as I go along and won't get to the end of a project and suddenly find that something is off, which helps. Also, I don't care what they say; it's way easier to unscrew something with an electric screwdriver than to have to undo 12 screws by hand and re-do them. Around the time that the entire base was joined as one my handy tool started to need recharging (because I neglected to charge it last night), plus it was getting to be lunchtime and the dog could probably stand to go out having been confined to the house so that she didn't eat screws or scratch at the weed blocking material.

So this is where we are for right now, and I know that the material is bigger than the base; that's on purpose because I can cut away excess later, but if I made it too small I'd have issues that were harder to fix. My back is on fire from stooping for hours but I'll get back out there and do more after lunch, which, btw, was beef and vegetable soup and half an apple (seriously, how is my cholesterol high?). There is a potential issue in that each long side is a short and a long piece and mine are the opposite configuration as the photo in the directions, but looking through the other pages I don't think it matters. We'll find out soon enough.