Santa Arrives with Our Greenhouse!

Merry Christmas to us! Our new Cedar-Built Greenhouse has arrived! Ordered the first week of September... expected to arrive late October... came yesterday, Dec. 13th, in a snowstorm, of course.  The "...between 2 and 4 pm..." delivery time turned out to be at 12:30 just as I was getting in my car to go to my December Quilt Club.  "I'm at the intersection of Rt.219 and 39," said the truck driver. Yikes! That's 5 minutes away, and there is no one here to unload, but me! Twenty minutes later, after some hasty phone calls, DH, his brother, and another nice strong 20-year-old with a pickup truck came to my rescue.

We live on a little dead-end side street, so the semi-truck had to back down our street to the end of our driveway. Six large and very heavy crates needed to move from the back of the semi, up our driveway, and into the garage.  No automatic lift-gate in this truck; it would take strong backs and pure muscle to do the job.  We needed a plan.  First crate: let's balance it on the garden wagon, and pull it to the garage with the lawn tractor. Okay, that kind of worked, but that was the smallest crate.  Can we get the larger ones onto that little wagon?

Thank goodness for Joe, the 20 year-old, and his pickup truck.  New plan: let Joe back up to the semi. Move the crates, one by one, into the pickup bed, and drive them into the garage.  "Now we're cooking... Don't drop'em boys... "  Thirty minutes, and a couple pinched fingers later the transfer was complete.  Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you, brother and friend! There's no way we could have done it without you.

Off I went to my Quilt Club, and DH spent the rest of the afternoon uncrating the greenhouse.  Of course, this means we will only be able to park 1 of our 2 cars in the garage.  One car (my car) will be sitting out in the snow until the greenhouse gets built.  (I see a lot of snow scraping in my future. Ugh!) 

The next step in this greenhouse adventure will be staining all the wooden pieces - no small task. I'm usually the painter of the family, so I've offered to take this on.  The garage can be heated, so as long as I can bear the fumes, I can get to it any time. My goal is to do a little at a time, but to have it finished in 1 month.  There's no real rush; it's not like we can beat the snow anymore. If our present winter weather continues as is throughout the season, we will be looking at a March greenhouse raising at the earliest.  Stay tuned:)

Cedar greenhouse- all in pieces waiting to be stained.