Pimp that hoe! and: Greenhouse done.
Apr. 18th, 2021 10:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
janestarzLast week Melle, a neighbour from Plan-B, gifted me a hoe. In the inheritance of Tante Bas was also a hoe, but it was one of those interchangable Gardena-system hoes, and I could switch out the hoe-head with a rake-head. But since I had only one long pole to connect the heads to, I'd already been switching out these heads a little too often to my liking.
The hoe Melle gave me, was a little rusty though, so I figured I'd try and de-rust it. On one of the YouTube channels I subscribe to, Epic Gardening, was a video of how to de-rust your garden tools. It seemed easy enough, so I grabbed a bottle of vinegar and tried his method. I put the head of the hoe in the vinegar in the morning, and roughly 12 hours later I grabbed a steel spunge, ready to start scrubbing.
To my surprise, it did not need ANY scrubbing. A single swipe with the spunge over the soaked steel was enough to completely clear it of all the rust. This method really works wonders!
Now I had a really shiny hoe-head, and a old, dry handle. How about I take some sand paper to buff the wood a bit? And maybe...use a little bit of wood stain to keep the wood nice?
To be fair, I would have preferred some kind of oil (and while I am typing this, I realise we actually do have such oil in the house to treat our cutting board with!) but I thought we only had wood stain (beits). And this was definitely a project to use what we have on hand. We can still only go shopping on appointment, and well, making a whole appointment just to get some sand paper seemed like a lot of work. So I used what we had in the house.
Sand paper 240 (for between the layers of paint) and some wood stain we had last used for pimping a bollerwagen for Maerquin, yearrrrs ago.
The end result (right) is quite lovely!
After last week's work on the greenhouse, I didn't have time for extended DIY'ing at the allotment until this weekend. Eisirt had to work both days, so I waited for him to get dressed in his uniform to get my things together and only spent the afternoons working on the greenhouse. That was quite alright though, because it's still painful work. The bolts and nuts won't turn very smoothly, the aluminium profiles have sharp edges, stuff wouldn't always line up properly and the thin metal keeping the plastic panes in place had a tendency to jump unexpectedly under a nail and draw blood. Fun times.
The how-to of the greenhouse had line drawings of how to put things together, but with irregularly shaped metal bits it was often quite hard to tell which way things should be facing. I had to unscrew some things at times, just because it finally dawned on me how things should go together. The best example was the bottom ledge of one of the sides. I had done one correctly, and I could attach a little hook into the foundation to screw onto the sides, making that side very secure.
On the other side of the greenhouse, I had done the L-shaped profile the other way around, making it impossible to attach the hooks. I thought it looked do-able to unscrew the bottom ledge and turn it around, but of course some of the bolts fell in the trench we dug for the foundation, and if you think the nuts and bolts worked fine before, you should try them when there's sand in them...
One of the other miscalculations we had was pouring the concrete and securing vertical supports around the foundation frame in step 1. In those corners I could no longer maneuver enough to screw the nuts and bolts in on all four corners, and I had to resort to zip ties for two of them. I could definitely not wedge the hook in to anchor that corner to the foundation frame either. And on two of the corners, the bottom L-shaped ledge wouldn't line up with the vertical support at all.
I doubt we could have maneuvered the entire greenhouse after building it though, so pouring the concrete after building the entire greenhouse would have been even more challenging.
In any case, six pm today it was done, all the white plastic foil removed (place on the inside) all the roof windows placed correctly (and not inside out), all the nail-scraping thin metal clamps that keep the plastic plates in place were used up.
What boggles the mind is how, with all the bolt holes pre-drilled, I still had three panels on the side of the greenhouse buckling because they were too large for the 'window' they were supposed to go in. It's not like I can move the vertical supports over a bit because that's not where the bolt holes are!
Anyway, it's done:
I've moved all the tools inside, and although I knew the greenhouse is kind of small with 190 cm at its highest point, I did not realise that wouldn't be tall enough to store my long garden tools in the corner, the new hoe and the rake are taller than the corner supports are high.
Next up, I will have to decide whether I want to dig a hole inside the greenhouse so I can stand up a little more easily without bumping my head every five minutes, but I have no idea how to shore up the sides. Especially since the corners each have a block of concrete, so I can't even shore up right up to the foundation. I've been playing around with the idea of shoring up a little way away from the sides, so there's an 'elevated' bed for my pepper plants right next to the wall, and a 'trench' to walk in in the middle. I'll mull this over a bit.
Things to decide and or do:
- Where to plant the lavender and dahlia's
- Where to place the pavers
- See how well the gutters actually work, because I have many doubts.
- Then: stuff with a rainbarrel or two or three.
- Move all the pepper plants and the seedlings to the allotment because now they can grow in the greenhouse until Last Frost Date.
It feels SO good to have this done, but Do Not Recommend. I highly doubt this will stay standing in even a mild autumn storm. We can of course secure the frame to the four supports on the corners (that have been secured in the concrete) but those flimsy plastic panes take very little to pop out of their sockets.
The hoe Melle gave me, was a little rusty though, so I figured I'd try and de-rust it. On one of the YouTube channels I subscribe to, Epic Gardening, was a video of how to de-rust your garden tools. It seemed easy enough, so I grabbed a bottle of vinegar and tried his method. I put the head of the hoe in the vinegar in the morning, and roughly 12 hours later I grabbed a steel spunge, ready to start scrubbing.
To my surprise, it did not need ANY scrubbing. A single swipe with the spunge over the soaked steel was enough to completely clear it of all the rust. This method really works wonders!
Now I had a really shiny hoe-head, and a old, dry handle. How about I take some sand paper to buff the wood a bit? And maybe...use a little bit of wood stain to keep the wood nice?
To be fair, I would have preferred some kind of oil (and while I am typing this, I realise we actually do have such oil in the house to treat our cutting board with!) but I thought we only had wood stain (beits). And this was definitely a project to use what we have on hand. We can still only go shopping on appointment, and well, making a whole appointment just to get some sand paper seemed like a lot of work. So I used what we had in the house.
Sand paper 240 (for between the layers of paint) and some wood stain we had last used for pimping a bollerwagen for Maerquin, yearrrrs ago.
The end result (right) is quite lovely!
After last week's work on the greenhouse, I didn't have time for extended DIY'ing at the allotment until this weekend. Eisirt had to work both days, so I waited for him to get dressed in his uniform to get my things together and only spent the afternoons working on the greenhouse. That was quite alright though, because it's still painful work. The bolts and nuts won't turn very smoothly, the aluminium profiles have sharp edges, stuff wouldn't always line up properly and the thin metal keeping the plastic panes in place had a tendency to jump unexpectedly under a nail and draw blood. Fun times.
The how-to of the greenhouse had line drawings of how to put things together, but with irregularly shaped metal bits it was often quite hard to tell which way things should be facing. I had to unscrew some things at times, just because it finally dawned on me how things should go together. The best example was the bottom ledge of one of the sides. I had done one correctly, and I could attach a little hook into the foundation to screw onto the sides, making that side very secure.
On the other side of the greenhouse, I had done the L-shaped profile the other way around, making it impossible to attach the hooks. I thought it looked do-able to unscrew the bottom ledge and turn it around, but of course some of the bolts fell in the trench we dug for the foundation, and if you think the nuts and bolts worked fine before, you should try them when there's sand in them...
One of the other miscalculations we had was pouring the concrete and securing vertical supports around the foundation frame in step 1. In those corners I could no longer maneuver enough to screw the nuts and bolts in on all four corners, and I had to resort to zip ties for two of them. I could definitely not wedge the hook in to anchor that corner to the foundation frame either. And on two of the corners, the bottom L-shaped ledge wouldn't line up with the vertical support at all.
I doubt we could have maneuvered the entire greenhouse after building it though, so pouring the concrete after building the entire greenhouse would have been even more challenging.
In any case, six pm today it was done, all the white plastic foil removed (place on the inside) all the roof windows placed correctly (and not inside out), all the nail-scraping thin metal clamps that keep the plastic plates in place were used up.
What boggles the mind is how, with all the bolt holes pre-drilled, I still had three panels on the side of the greenhouse buckling because they were too large for the 'window' they were supposed to go in. It's not like I can move the vertical supports over a bit because that's not where the bolt holes are!
Anyway, it's done:
I've moved all the tools inside, and although I knew the greenhouse is kind of small with 190 cm at its highest point, I did not realise that wouldn't be tall enough to store my long garden tools in the corner, the new hoe and the rake are taller than the corner supports are high.
Next up, I will have to decide whether I want to dig a hole inside the greenhouse so I can stand up a little more easily without bumping my head every five minutes, but I have no idea how to shore up the sides. Especially since the corners each have a block of concrete, so I can't even shore up right up to the foundation. I've been playing around with the idea of shoring up a little way away from the sides, so there's an 'elevated' bed for my pepper plants right next to the wall, and a 'trench' to walk in in the middle. I'll mull this over a bit.
Things to decide and or do:
- Where to plant the lavender and dahlia's
- Where to place the pavers
- See how well the gutters actually work, because I have many doubts.
- Then: stuff with a rainbarrel or two or three.
- Move all the pepper plants and the seedlings to the allotment because now they can grow in the greenhouse until Last Frost Date.
It feels SO good to have this done, but Do Not Recommend. I highly doubt this will stay standing in even a mild autumn storm. We can of course secure the frame to the four supports on the corners (that have been secured in the concrete) but those flimsy plastic panes take very little to pop out of their sockets.
