A kitchen with a roof and greenhouse, OH BOY.

I haven't updated in a over a month. This is not because I have given up. It is not because I have been sitting around. Quite the contrary. Besides the fact that we've been super busy pretending to be carpenters, raising roof beams, etc. I have also been knee deep in work at my "real" job, or rather, the job that pays the bills. (Work at home, work at work, work at home, work at work. I outta retire in five years due to exhaustion, but for now: work at home, work at work, repeat.) Work at work is where I get my internet and try to post a blog. I am currently the assistant director of a Teen Center. And yes, we have fun, almost too much fun, usually. High school lunch doesn't get out for another forty five minutes, so I don't yet have 40 high school kids to hang out with at this moment. That said, Voila! Here is my long overdue, action packed blog post.

A month ago we started working on the greenhouse! We were finishing up the trusses for our roof. These "trusses" are being made out of scrap wood that we get from our local saw mill. They are free, free! FREE! Except for the price of screws. We've put over 50 pounds of screws into our house so far.

This is from about a month ago:

And we built on! Collecting enough wood for these trusses is a little bit of a challenge. Driving to the saw mill takes time, and when you get there, you have to hope the scraps are good. Eventually we collected enough. The pickings have been a little more slim compared to last year, but we're not yet complaining. It is free.

After this, we finished our greenhouse bond beam which allowed us to attach wood to the tire wall. As well as the rest of the kitchen roof trusses.

And then we were able to start the greenhouse construction! It took us over a year to build the outer three walls (the tire walls), and only four days to frame the front face (the greenhouse wall). Phew. I hadn't been that tired in a long long time. But we did it! It was such a great relief, too! Here's a nerdy photo of two very accomplished feeling individuals from my camera's self timer. We lifted that huge thing up all by ourselves, only dropping it (and completely breaking it) once, while raising it.

Our greenhouse is made out of redwood: which means $$$. The wood is supposed to last in the humid environment that we'll be creating in the future.

And: Ta-da! We finished over half of it! You are looking at our greenhouse, minus the glass that's going in there!!

And, I leveled the kitchen floor! Soon we'll be able to tile with the tiles we scored from the Habitat Re-Store. Well, "soon" as in: we need a roof first. But that's around the corner! This will be the view from our bathroom! And speaking of roof, we'll be putting one onto our house in the near future!

Alright. You are now UP TO DATE. I will make you a promise: I will update more than once every five weeks for now on. Promise. Wish us luck!