4 Cozy Reading Nooks You’ll Want in Your Home Right Now Constructing a reading nook doesn’t have to be hard. Sometimes all you need is lots of pillows and a little unused space. Reading nooks are also a great way to use dead, unused, or awkward space within a home. Nooks can help maximize living space and provide additional seating, along with providing a personal sanctuary. With these four easy DIY reading nook projects, it won’t be long before you find yourself dreaming of getting lost in a good book. 1. Make Use of Dead Space with a Corner Bench Do you have a dead corner in your house that’s just…there? A great remedy for that empty space is a corner bench. Creating an L-shaped bench will maximize your space. Not only will it provide additional seating, but it can also become storage. Create this bench with bookshelves, cushions, and pillows for the ultimate reading nook space. When the bookshelves are placed together, you can then determine what size cushion you will need to go on ...
How to Build a Greenhouse in 7 Easy Steps
Step 1: Find Plans (or in our case…make them!)
Start with a plan! When researching how to build a greenhouse, the final plan selection is entirely up to you and your requirements. The internet is loaded with plans that are free or available to purchase.
Now, I know this may sound counter-intuitive, but… when searching for how to build a greenhouse plans, don’t be too focused on dimensions. Meaning, don’t overlook plans simply because they specify an 8’ x 10’ design when your requirements are 12’ x 16’. You’d be surprised at how easily these plans can be adjusted to your specifications!
Make adjustments to your plan accordingly
If you need it wider, adjust the plan to incorporate wider walls in the front and rear. Want it longer? Increase the length of the side walls. Some changes can be easily made by simply using 10’ lumber instead of 8’, or in the case of length using 16’ lumber instead of 10’ or 12’. Heck, you can even combined plans if you want! Now if you want to go from a simple “Gable” roof to a “Hip”, “Gambrel”, or “Hip and Valley” style roof, rafter angles will also need to be adjusted and so forth.
All still doable, though!
We embraced the DIY spirit and opted to build our own plans. Don’t settle! If you choose this route as well, be sure to create both detailed materials and cut lists as they will come in quite handy in Steps 4 and 5 below.
Step 2: Plan, plan, and plan some more!
“I wish I would have done…”, or “If we ever do this again, next time we’ll…”
C’mon…we’ve all found ourselves making these statements, amirite? Hindsight is 20/20!
Look, you will always find something you wish you would have done differently, no matter how well you feel you’ve covered all the angles. My point; use the extra planning time to account for the things that could come back to bite you.
It is rare you’ll find an all-encompassing plan that covers the build itself along with ventilation, shelf placements, power runs, etc. You’ll want to start with the end in mind.
An example? I’m glad you asked…
When you have your plan – visualize it in your head and take a virtual tour. Where will the ventilation go? What about the cabling to power it? If your ventilation system requires 16’ vents, is your wall stud spacing on that particular wall adequate? Are you a stickler for symmetry? If so, will your vents align neatly front to back between your intake vents and your exhaust fan? Where and how are your future shelves and tables mounted? Now is the time to account for some extra blocking as “deadwood” to screw in to.
These are all things that can come back and bite you so plan and adjust accordingly! Trust me, you don’t want that “sick to your stomach” feeling when you realize you’ll have to rebuild a wall after you’ve put it up!
Step 3: Site preparation
We’ve already discussed site location previously, so you should already know where you want to place your greenhouse. The next step would be to ensure you remove any turf and layout and square your footprint.
Batter boards will help in squaring your layout. You can buy these or make them from scrap as we did. They allow you to make adjustments to your layout by giving you an area on eight sides to slide your string. Very helpful!
Foundation options
There are many foundation options available for your greenhouse. You can pour a concrete pad, bury wooden posts, use foundation blocks, or you can even place it directly on the ground if you want (although not preferred as this will shorten the lifespan and involve extensive grading to achieve a level surface).
Inlaying and using gravel allows for proper drainage and ensures no shifting in the future.
For our build, we used solid concrete blocks inset a couple of inches into the ground laid on a bed of gravel. The concrete blocks were each leveled independently and then leveled with each other as well.
We chose this method because our site location was on an aggressive slope and we felt it would be a little easier with this approach (and it was!).
Step 4: Purchase Materials
So, you’ve searched the Internet for how to build a greenhouse, and now you need to know what you need to procure the materials. Ok, you have your plans and hopefully, they came with (or you added) a detailed materials list? Ok, good. Just making sure 😊
Our 3 recommendations:
Recommendation #1
Buy everything at once, especially if you require delivery as you don’t want to spend that money twice. Most of the big box stores will deliver the next day. If you have several of the same stores in your area, compare their delivery charges! You would think this is a standard fee, but it’s not (at least in my area anyway). We have 2 of the same store name within 13 miles of each other. Both deliver to us, yet one of them charges $59 for delivery, while the other $79. That’s $20 that can go to coffee or energy drinks to get you through the build!
Recommendation #2
DON’T order your dimensional lumber online! It is best to go pick through yourself. Trust me, the store employees that pull your order will grab the 48 2”x4” studs you ordered from the top of the pile. You know, from the pieces that the others DIY’ers threw to the side to get to the straight pieces underneath. You don’t want to build your greenhouse from materials that are twisted, cupped, bowed, cracked, or full of knots. Yikes!
Recommendation #3
Buy extra! There is nothing worse than being short a piece of lumber or a handful of screws. Keep the receipts so you can always return any excess water.
Step 5: Cut all materials
We used an “assembly line” approach. We set up our compound miter saw next to your lumber pile and cut all your materials to our “cut list” specifications. This way we were able to clean up and move on to assembly without breathing in sawdust. Oh…and be sure to wear eye protection and a dust mask or respirator when cutting your lumber, especially if using pressure-treated. This will save hours of watery eyes, sneezing, and cleaning out “sawdust boogies” …yuck!
Step 6: The build!
Base construction
We built our greenhouse base (the part that the walls would sit on and attach to) using 4” x 4” treated for ground contact lumber with a half-lap joint construction.
Half-lap joints can be done using a hand saw or circular saw. We used a circular saw to make a series of wafer cuts and then removed the material with a hammer. You ‘ll need to clean up the joint a bit with either a sander or chisel.
Once assembled (using 3 ½ exterior grade wood screws approved for treated lumber!) we were able to set it in place on the previously leveled foundation blocks.
We did a pretty good job leveling the blocks so luckily, we didn’t have to make any adjustments!
Construct the walls
Once the base was set on the foundation, we were ready to move on to the walls.
This is a very repetitive process since you’ll be assembling the front and rear walls, as well as the two side walls in the same manner. But hey…practice makes perfect, right? We found we got into a rhythm after the first wall was assembled and we moved a little quicker with each subsequent wall.
Very important: Since we used screws, we made sure to pre-drill the top and bottom plates of the walls before attaching the studs with screws to minimize splitting.
We also made sure the walls were built square as this greatly reduced any potential fitment issues when we raised them and later installed the roof rafters.
Attach the walls to the foundation
Now that we had our four walls assembled, we carried them down to the site location and attached them to the base using heavy-duty 2 7/8” X 3/8” lag screws.
You have a few options when attaching the walls. If you have a community wall raising ceremony and have 20 people show up – you can place them all and attached. If you’re like us and only have a party of two – you’ll need to think about bracing each as they go up until you can attach them to each other.
Construct the roof components
The Rafters
If there is anything that requires a little extra thought – it’s this part. This is where the geometry comes in, so I hope you paid attention in school! Just kidding, you can easily look up any roofing tutorials with a quick Internet search. We don’t have heavy snowfall in my part of VA, so we used a basic 7/12 roof pitch or 30-degree slope. This means the roof itself rises 7” for every 12 horizontal inches.
What this really meant is that we needed to cut our rafters with 2 separate angles. One end at 30-degrees and the other at 60-degrees. This was all done under Step 5 above.
I know this might make your brain hurt a little but trust me – you can easily find this information readily available through your search engine of choice. You can check one out HERE.
The Ridge Beam Assembly
Since our greenhouse is 16’ long, we simply used a single piece 16’ long 2” x 6” lumber. It was attached to the two risers (which were cut to specifications to achieve the 7/12 roof pitch, BTW) using galvanized mending plates at the seams, a single pocket hole screw at the 45-degree joint, and covered by a 45-Degree L-Bracket.
All these fasteners may be considered overkill by some since the primary stabilization comes when the rafters are tied in, but we erred on the side of caution.
A tip regarding “Dimensional” lumber
When purchasing lumber from your neighborhood big box, these will run a little longer, so you’ll want to make sure you trim them down. This also allows you to ensure a good, square cut and not rely on the store’s suppliers.
Once we had the ridge beam assembled, we hauled it down to the site and put it up.
The assembly was fastened to the walls with 45-degree L-Brackets. These were mounted 1.5” apart (width of standard 2” lumber, actually) – centered on both the front and rear walls.
After attaching the remaining rafters, we attached the horizontal bracing. We overlooked the horizontal bracing initially, so we had to retrofit them. Oops!
At this point, the bones of the greenhouse were complete! High-fives all around
Attaching the Door
The door is completely up to you so have fun with the design. Heck, you could even build your greenhouse with the dimensions to fit a door you already own. Up to you! We chose to build a “Dutch-style” door that would allow us to open the top half for extra ventilation while keeping the lower half closed to keep out the animals and critters. Plus, we just love the way it looks!
You’ll also notice we chose solid clear panels for the door instead of the corrugated panels used on the roof and walls. This was done purely for aesthetics and to allow for a little better view of the garden. Completely optional as these U/V resistant panels from Lexan are significantly more expensive!
Attach Siding, Flashing, and Panels
We chose to add some composite paneling to the lower section of the greenhouse purely for looks. We could have easily carried the Poly-Carbonate panels all the way down. The composite paneling, we believe, added a nice finished look to the greenhouse.
We also added some flashing to ensure water doesn’t get in behind the composite paneling or the Poly-Carbonate panels. These pieces of flashing come in 10’ lengths from your local hardware store and are simply attached with galvanized nails.
Glass or Plastic?
We chose Tuftex PolyCarb Panels for our greenhouse application. These panels are lightweight, easy to install, and don’t require any special tools. They stand up to temperatures ranging from 270 degrees to -40 degrees and are U/V resistant.
Make sure you purchase the “PolyCarb” and not the Seacoast as these are not the same and won’t stand up to the temperatures!
While glass is certainly traditional, its significantly more expensive and heavier which would result in structural modifications for sure, as well as special tools for cutting and additional installation steps. If you choose to use the Tuftex PolyCarb Panels, make sure you get to use the accompanying closure strips (for creating a tight seal when attaching) and 2” screws with neoprene washers for wood. All of which are sold with the panels.
Step 7: The most important step…
Now is the fun part…use your greenhouse, show your friends. They’ll be asking you how to build a greenhouse, too!
Admire your work! Take a step back and look at what you’ve built.
We truly hope this motivates you to do more projects yourself.
Yes! You CAN do it yourself!
What’s inside the greenhouse?
For a complete tour of our Greenhouse, keep an eye out for our YouTube channel! We will be posting an updated tour once we’re done with the power and ventilation installs.
Source from here
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