Building A Greenhouse
When we got our plot, we inherited three builds that were falling down. One of the buildings was an old greenhouse. It had a brick base, rotten wooden beams and some glass panes, most of them had fallen out though! It was FULL of weeds and the roof was covered in an amazing old grape vine. This building had so much potential, and one of our early goals was to restore it to it’s original glory. But first, we had to knock it down…
Our skills, however, don’t stretch to woodwork and construction! So we called in some help. Our friend came to help us and designed and pretty much built the whole thing. We could not have done it without him. We were really keen to learn alongside him and up skill as much as we could! We were told that we had to build two brick walls to bring up the bricks to match on all sides. How hard can that be, right? It turns out, quite hard! We ordered all the gear, and definitely had no idea. A small group of us started to tackle building the brick wall, with zero experience or practise. It started off as such a stressful day, as we felt under time pressure, as the weather was about to turn (can you remember when it rained solidly for all of February?!). We all had a bit of a cry, and then we gave ourselves a talking to and cracked on. It took us 4 hours to lay 5 bricks (I’m not even joking!), but then after that we kind of got into the swing of it and it came together a lot quicker. We all kind of realised what we best at, and started working as a team. We even had some other people join us, and we ended up teaching them! By the end of the day, we had built a blummin’ wall. I think it was the proudest I have ever been. We were all completely exhausted! We covered the wall and hoped for the best. Storm Dennis was due, so we said some prayers and crossed all our fingers that our masterpiece would stand up against the storm.
The wall survived, so we then concentrated our efforts in preparing all the wood for the beams and upright supports. We armed our volunteers with paint and brushes and got to work! We chose a green/blue colour for something fresh and fun.
Then in one weekend, it pretty much all went up! There was lots of time spent up ladders getting the frame right, but it was so exciting to see it all come together so fast.
The weekend after was spent putting the glass in. This was probably the trickiest bit, and the most scary. We got all our glass second hand from a plant nursery that was closing down. It was quite windy that weekend, so it was a bit touch and go. Again we had a team working on the greenhouse, all of us working to our strengths. When the glass was in, it looked amazing! An absolute dream come true. Now we have a wonderful space to raise seedlings and teach women and girls new skills. We’ve even left space for the grapevine to come back in, so we will be training that guy, back into the greenhouse over the summer. The next job is tiling the floor…
