I just can’t face another year of disappointment growing tomatoes and other warm climate vegetables.  It was time to invest in a green house.  Although my heart says victorian glasshouse my head and pocket said poly tunnel. And within just a few days of ordering our new grand design creation was being offloaded a lorry with a crane.

Although I’d paid extra for 70% pre-build I was pretty alarmed to see that so much of my new garden architecture was still very much in it’s component parts.  My heart sank further when the instructions for building come in a 40 minute instruction video.  I fear this is going to be an project of epic proportions that will bring it’s fair share of tears and tantrums.

I can feel my father and father-in-law rolling their eyes and tutting already.  Precision building engineers they may be buts short of building the darn thing up by the house and carrying it the length of the garden we didn’t have much option but to build this on slightly uneven ground.  Ever so slightly!

As you might imagine it was the female in our household that climbed back up the garden to fetch the instruction sheets discarded as unnecessary after a quick glance over by the chief engineer and project manager.  After a little over 2 hours we finally managed to piece together the bare framework.  If we’d bought the 70% pre-build option I’d hate to think how long it would have taken to build from scratch.  Thank heavens for power drills.

We are still a long way from completion but amassing a massive list of items to feedback to the company about how they could improve these kits.  Top of list is to sell a 30% build on site option.  For all the huffing and puffing, cursing and swearing, bashing and bruising I’d have paid handsomely for a man who knows how to do his thing.  Why of why don’t they pre-drill all the frames.  This was hard core flat pack construction not for the feint-hearted.

We started out grand design build your own green house basking in autumn sunlight and just about managed to complete stage one before the sun went down.  For all the aches and pains I’m now sporting I’m rather pleased with the efforts so far.  Just the roof ventilation to install, the sliding door, louvre window and last but not least it’s plastic overcoat.  I fear that this may take some time given the high winds forecast for the next few days.   That and half the neighbours to do battle with the remaining component parts.