Read about how we built an attached greenhouse for $100.00 and you can build something like it for around $140.00.

We have a big hole in our kitchen floor.  It started as a small hole, but I kept digging it back and finding rotted wood... so, just like a dentist with a bad tooth, I had to get to "good area".  That took about a 3'x5' space.  It's still sitting there.  It's located where the refridgerator is SUPPOSED to be.  The refidgerator is in the breezeway that connects the garage and the house. I need to fix the floor, but there was no use fixing it until I fixed the problem. The problem was that the breezeway roof funnels rain from the garage and the breezeway roof right to the foundation.  It literally just dumps right there. The breezeway floor (a concrete pad) would actually get water in it also. It would soak the carpet.  It was one of the most stupid things I've ever seen in construction and housing.  It's a pretty big problem.  So the only way to fix it (practically) is to put a pad in outside the breezeway door. There was a small pad and it, ever so slightly, slopes back toward the house... (ARGGGHHH). But in order to fix the problem we had to fix the drainage problem. So today after church, we began to pour our pad. It's about 10 feet by 5 feet and we (due to costs and the ability to move the current pad) left the old pad and just poured around it. It took 12 bags of 80 lb. quickrete. Quickrete is difficult to work with on large scale in the best of situations because each mix is slightly different moisture.  It's especially hard if you don't have a wheel barrow to mix it in. I don't have a wheel barrow.  It's a long painful story, but to give it quickly, someone stole it from me... not once but twice. So we still had to mix the concrete and we had to use what we had... which was a plastic tote.  Not exactly ideal...  After two bags, we found it was easier to get a good mix with half a bag each mix, which was slow... but at least somewhat more consistent. I had my 15 year old neighbor, Tyler helping.  He actually wanted to.  He's a good kid. Pray for him.  He's always home alone and his dad isn't around.  He eats dinner with us at least once a week and he helps out on projects around here.  He likes to learn and I like to share new things with him.  He thinks we are exciting because we have chickens and goats and make apple cider and Amy cooks and my kids are all friendly to him. We stared the day with Tyler and Noah mixing the concrete (after I showed them how) but that didn't last long because their idea of a thourough mixture was not up to snuff. Enter my wonderful wife.  She really is a blessing. She told me tonight that she was happy to do it because she got to learn about concrete and had never done it.  Wow, I am blessed.  Perhaps it's all the cookies and cakes she has mixed, but she and Hosanna were good at mixing the concrete up.  So Noah and Tyler were relegated to manual labor... pick this up, move this over here, carry this, dump this, get water... all needed jobs and all thankfully fulfilled. It was funny the motivating factor for the continued dillgence to the job (besides my yelling... "work doesn't stop to take a break in the concrete business") was the RIGHT to put in palm prints and names.  I told them up front that it was illegal to do until the project was finished. We were one bag short (That's the picture above... one bag short) and Amy ran to the lumber yard to grab one... it was tough marrying it to the other, because it was beginning to set.  But we got it and finally, we were able to put in our names.  Our whole, extended family... including Tyler. Now this is important because it allows us to move forward on our hole in the floor and just as importantly is that we are able to convert that pad to our new, attached green house.  Yes that's right, we are putting in a greenhouse there. We are excited.  More  pictures will be forthcoming, but know this, I found the conduit I am using back in the "bone yard" junk pile on my land.  We bought plastic and I have an old screen door in the back also.  We hope to have fresh lettuce through the winter and a good early start to our seeds this year. The pad cost about 48 dollars for the concrete (12 bags in a mini van along with 7 landscaping ties are heavy) .  The plastic cost around 15 dollars and I bought landscaping timbers for the bottom of the greenhouses that tallied 27 dollars. So I hope to fix our drainage problem, have the new patio pad, and have a greenhouse for less than a $100.00  It's wonderful when things that HAVE to be fixed (drainage and pad) fit in with things that we WANT to do efficiently.
Read Part II over here.