Greenhouse Construction

One of the first challenges of spring was to get our 2nd hand greenhouse up, which sounds like an easy task: 32 feet long, metal arches sunk in the ground and one piece of plastic. Oh, and I've done this a few times before. But like most things to do with me and DIY, I generally don't make life easy for myself and this proved to be another addition to the catalogue of 'how not to do it'. It turns out that every greenhouse is pretty different. Londoner let loose with a few tools....watch out! Anyway, we got the anchoring posts in pretty quickly (not quite straight! and I morphed a few of the posts before realizing that putting wood on top whilst using the sledgehammer helps keep the metal poles in the right shape). I managed to find some replacement posts and learned that you really can go through steel with a drill. Yes, I'm learning! The frame was fairly quick to go up, but the Annapolis valley is windy so we  had to wait a long time to roll on the plastic. Thankfully our neighbours Greg and Mark (plus my beautiful tractor) came to the rescue and we got the plastic on during some gusty winds. Mark got in the bucket of the tractor and hauled it down to the end then it was time to hang on for dear life and fasten it quick before we ended up in Maine. Note to self: cover up all sharp edges with duct tape to avoid holes and allow for plastic tightening. With the help of my Mum (the blind leading the blind), we constructed the ends in a couple of days once the winds had died down, but the plastic was flapping around for ages - all the locals now have their premonitions confirmed - these guys are rookies! Kris and I just polished off the doors and somehow it worked out that we got them almost exactly the size of a piece of plywood 8ft by 4ft. Pure luck as our "blueprints" (sketched on a post-it note) didn't include any measurements. How long is it going to last? Place your bets. Put it this way, if we have some strong winds or a hurricane look out for random news stories of flying greenhouses! Those of you in England might even get a freebie.