Greenhouse – Part 1

Finally have an opportunity to sit down and write a few words.  Despite the continuous snow fall that we seem to be getting lately, I am thinking spring. Inspired by searching for greenhouses on Pinterest I came across a greenhouse design PIN that we think would work for us from the Ana-white.com website I tweaked the design, a smidge as I always seem to do and started the build a couple of weekends ago.  I ended up building it in the garage because it was hovering right around 0-degrees outside without wind chill at the time.

We decided to go 10’ x 10’ in size and figured we would use clear plastic panels to skin the whole outside.  We are in a heavily wooded area so we are hoping that this will help get us to an early start this growing season before all the trees leaf out.

I ended up building this by myself in one weekend, and because I was building inside, I had to build it so it could be knocked down, moved out of the garage and assembled outside.  The side walls are each their own components.  The front and rear end walls are also their own components.  Lastly the (4) roof trusses and ridge are one component.  Anything that was not being disassembled was nailed, and any connection points that I was going to need to disassemble was put together with screws.

I started construction with the knee wall.  I used a 2×4 PT sill plate and KD SPF 2×4 top plate and 2×4 studs 24” o.c. to build the knee walls.  I threw and extra 2×4 in at the corners so I could easily screw in the front & rear walls to the sides walls.

Next I built the end walls.  The first thing I did was to make the rafter gussets.  The Ana-white website has a great video of how to this, which saved me from having to figure it out.

Essentially using a piece of blue tape and a couple quick marks on my chop saw you can mark the point where you make your 22.5-degree angle cuts and where you make your 90-degree cross cuts.  This made for quick work of cutting out the dozen or so plywood gussets I needed for the trusses.

With all the gussets cut, I cut a total of 8 rafters 48” long with 22.5-degree angles on both ends.  These are for the end walls.  It easy to make a quick jig for cutting your rafters to length as well.  With the rafters cut, I glued the but joint where they meet and clamped them to my work table.  I then applied a liberal amount of glue to the face of the rafters getting the plywood gusset plate, and clamped it down.  Eight screw later and I was good to go.  Just make sure you thing about the orientation of the gussets prior to assembly on your greenhouse.  I wanted all gussets facing inside the greenhouse, so they would cause a problem when I side the outside face of the greenhouse walls.

Three gusset plates and four 48” roof rafters and I had the end wall roof rafter ready to go in place.  I had to add a couple more 2×4’s to keep the end wall rigid when I go to move it outside.  Rinse and repeat for the opposite end and away you go.

I got both end walls up and stopped for the night.  The next day I set the ridge up and and made the rest of my rafters up and installed them.  I don’t have many photos but it’s pretty easy to figure out.  Just make sure you do the math on the lengths of your pieces so everything will work.  I deviated from the Ana-white plans on the framing so some of my dimensions were slightly different.  This goes up quick and is an easy build just take your time.