I accidentally built a fairytale greenhouse (Story 59)

This greenhouse took a year to finish and it has gone through an evolution. So last year I decided to make a greenhouse on a budget using all the cheap materials and I failed. I failed very much. And this year I decided I should just make something good and I think I succeeded because it's honestly I think this is my favourite new space in my house and it's not even in my house. So last winter I was sitting in my garden looking like a sad skeleton of a building and it went through quite a few stages and it somehow turned into this sort of unintentional fairy tale almost design and honestly it's so cute. I feel like I want to build a house that kind of looks like this. I was looking at images online and I found this cute design for a tiny greenhouse. It was the size of a small vegetable bed with like an angled front panel that you can lift up and I decided to make something like that just really big. So I had large panels that you could lift up from the front and then you just sort of step into the structure to the plants right in front of you. So that's what I did. I tried to keep things simple and to keep costs down so I got a load of impregnated timber and fence posts and created the basic structure and instead of using glass or solid plastic panels I opted for greenhouse foil because it would make it really easy to access the plants inside. But I did really struggle to find cheap greenhouse film so my parents found some plastic at the hardware store and brought it to me when they visited during the summer. So then I stapled everything to the frame and quickly realized I had a problem. It's really nice and cool in here, I felt. You can access the entire length of this greenhouse by opening up each section. I mean it's nice though isn't it? In theory. It just doesn't work. So first of all the plastic wasn't properly translucent and the greenhouse wasn't warming up and functioning as a greenhouse and then also the wind came and everything was flying all over the place and the plastic panels did not stay in place. So I felt a little sad for myself and my sad skeleton structure and I left it abandoned during the winter so this year I decided to fix it. This spring I went back to the design and tried to figure out how I could turn this like very literal bare bone design into something that could actually function as a greenhouse and I knew the first thing I needed to do was abandon the idea of using the plastic foil and actually use solid panels and that's how I ended up with this. So that's what I wanted to avoid initially because it gets so expensive but I knew that with my odd shape I had to use something more solid than the film that I originally wanted and this is when I made the first change to the structure. Changing the design to a solid building meant that it was suddenly a space that I was actually going to have to enter. So I needed a proper door and I had to consider the limited moving space that I was now left with because of the triangular shape and losing the front panels as an entry point. I could have introduced huge doors with hinges to the entire front but it just seemed like something that could quite easily go wrong so instead I added a dormer to the center. This meant I could put in a door and I quickly decided to make the dormer the entire middle third section of the structure to increase unusable space inside and that was the first thing I started changing and then something else happened. So I found this. I found it in the discount section of like the former display section of a furniture shop and it was downpriced by so much and very quickly realized that this would look so cool as a workbench in the greenhouse. So I took it in there placed it opposite the entry which is pretty much the only space where you could put a workbench but it just ate so much into the space and made it so much more difficult to get into the like the wings of the greenhouse and then suddenly I placed this outside of the structure. I was like okay that's it I'm going to extend the building in the back. So the middle third of the building is going to get a slight recess to allow for this workbench and I am really excited about this. It's going to make the whole space so much more usable. It's also raining so much. So okay so I currently have two shapes. A triangular shape, a rectangular shape and I was going to have a flat roof until I got reminded of the fact that I get snow. I don't get loads of snow. It comes and goes but I do get snow and then I then I figured I should raise the roof at the front and slant it towards the back so I could scoop away the snow during winter but I just thought of a much better idea. This is what happened. I was looking at all the houses here and also my own and realized that they all have little dormers with tiny pitched roofs and you know which is really cute. So I quickly decided to pitch the roof instead of just angling it up and I just knew that this was going to change everything like aesthetically on the inside. I worked up a quick sketchup model to figure it out. Originally I was just going to build it right on top of the structure but then I realized how tall it was going to be and that I wouldn't actually be able to reach the roof to finish it once it was installed. So this meant making the entire roof separately cladded with the corrugated plastic and then place it on top of the structure as a whole. So we went back to get more timber. I don't have a car myself so changing the design and getting timber like three times was a bit of a luxury. The greenhouse is on a slight slope so I needed to take that into consideration for the inside vegetable beds. I tried to keep it simple so I buried some of the timber and on the other side my mom placed rocks and turf inside the beds to straighten it out a little. Creating this greenhouse was one of the best things ever. It took quite a few days but seeing something appear in 3D was so exciting. Like really creating something new is so much more exciting to me than renovating something old and the progress was also so much faster because it's just a greenhouse and it doesn't need to be perfect which really helps and I got really passionate about seeing it change so quickly. I got this really nice timber for the shelves and decided to make something extra. There's this big rock right inside the greenhouse and I wanted to make a little table on top so I more usable space and this turned into the cutest little table ever. Then I finally made the work bench. I wasn't quite sure if I was going to use the ladder I bought but I decided it was too nice to use in a greenhouse and that I might put it up as a shelf in the kitchen so I got extra timber and made a simple version myself. I used the same timber for the front and back and all the slats and I just fixed them with screws. I would have used dowels and glue if it was for something inside the house but for the greenhouse I don't mind seeing the screws. I put one feet slat on the front and then two on the back so they wouldn't twist. The biggest surprise though was that finishing. This took only about half a day. I can hardly believe I did a project so fast. When I installed it it was honestly just the cutest thing and I can't really get over how cute this greenhouse has turned out. It has really taken me by surprise. So this space has honestly just turned into the coziest space with all of these little nugs. Obviously this angled space here is not the most convenient but it just kind of ended up like that because of the original design but it's actually not too bad. It works really well having vegetable beds at the end and at the front towards, you know, the lower sloping side. Having this work bench is amazing and changes everything. The pitched ceiling is the cutest thing ever. This this little house would not look as cozy as it does if it didn't have the little pitched ceiling. I genuinely love it and I'm so happy I put this in but it was so worth just putting in the extra day to create that. Like, wow. I am just really hoping that this space is going to remain cozy and I can, you know, really benefit from it. It's definitely warm. It works as a greenhouse. We transported a couple of the plants from the garden beds outside into here and we also sowed a few new things like salad and radishes. Things that you can still sow right now. So we'll see what happens with it and it just it just looks so cute. So because of the way I designed it I do have some rain coming through these gaps but it's really not bad at all. Mostly it just kind of, there's a couple of drops that kind of seep down to the front of the space mostly so it's not something that I'm concerned with. I don't mind getting it, getting the inside a little bit wet. So I haven't put any soil in this bed yet but I think I will next year for now. I put some cabbages and tomato plants here and then I think next year I might put tomato plants on the ends so then they can grow through the workbench which is, you know, obviously made of slats and, you know, grow as tall as they need to go. So I think that's a really cute addition and having the slats in the workbench also just helps with the sun coming through more rather than having solid shelves. Also, isn't this just the cutest little bench? It's so cute. I love it so much. It's so useful to have something on top of this rock which is completely in the way.