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greenhouse upstairs door installed
Friday, June 22 2012
This morning I installed the custom door I'd been making into the opening I'd made for it in the greenhouse upstairs. Generally when working on projects outside the house, I don't bother with door jams and all that finish stuff; I size the door for the rough opening and hang it directly in that. This has worked well for the door to the laboratory (which is in the house) as well as the brownhouse and downstairs greenhouse doors. I ended up hanging the door a smidge too high today and had to do some sanding to get it to close smoothly, but the results ended up being satisfying.
I'd left the inside of the door mostly unfinished. Eventually styrofoam blocks will have to be fitted into the rectangles between the framework. I filled one of the smaller rectangles with scrap styrofoam and covered it with an L-shaped piece of plywood that sent one of its legs out along the top of the window socket, projecting out over the void just enough to hold the window frame when I inserted it. At the bottom of the socket, I installed a latching mechanism to secure the frame. This makes it easy to remove and replace with other frames, such as one holding a screen (or perhaps an LCD panel).
In the afternoon while Gretchen was over in Bearsville swimming at the pool belonging to our richest on-again-off-again friend, a dramatic thunderstorm blew through. I was in the greenhouse upstairs for part of it, and it was good to have three fourths of the walls up (the south wall is still unfinished and covered with a tarp). At some point marble-sized balls of hail joined the rain, though it wasn't enough to damage solar panels or destroy the garden (the latter has partially happened in the past).
At some point after the worst of the thunderstorms had moved on, the power went out and remained off for four or five hours. But because so many of my power tools run on batteries, I could continue working on my greenhouse project. I began the work of building a makeshift casement for the upstair's east window, but of course I measured wrong and failed to take into account the thickness of the casement wood itself and ended up with a casement that was 1.5 inches too long in both dimensions.
Usually when the power goes out it isn't fixed until the next day, so I'd prepared myself for an evening of reading Chaos by battery-powered headlamp. But then the power came back on, allowing me to fix the mismeasured casement using my chop saw (the battery-powered circle saw being miserable for any but the most trivial of cuts). I could also watch teevee. I found myself drinking booze and watching a new A&E series called Barter Kings which, though obviously overstaged, is more compelling than the promos had led me to believe.
The greenhouse upstairs door from the outside.
The greenhouse upstairs door from the inside. Note the bottle of Sierra Nevada Torpedo, one of the best beers available on the East Coast. Also note the cans of Mountain Brew Beer Ice.
A closeup of the greenhouse upstairs modular window. Notice the L-shaped piece of plywood holding it at the top and the latch holding it at the bottom.
Julius (aka "Stripey") keeping things real on the structure where the south-facing glass will go.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?120622 feedback
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