A Story Of Light
Glass is cool. As a young boy, I would become lost in a fantasy wild gazing into a prism. I sometimes imagined myself inside the alien world of a kaleidoscope with its endless patterns of color and geometry. The mystery of deep cobalt-blue emanating from the church window kept me awestruck, albeit to the complete exclusion of the priest droning on in Latin.
I say all that to say this;
The above greenhouse has a lot of stained and patterned glass, and that motivates me to go way beyond just making an enclosure with old windows, I get obsessed. Iโve always had a fascination with translucent things and ever since I began to work with glass, I keep finding new ways to understand and appreciate its unique properties and qualities. Kory Dollar of Marvelous Mosaic has a LOT of rare and expensive glass. I was fortunate to have bartered with her for a lot of the stained glass used in this project. For instance, check out this green glass I installed on the back wall! This is hand-rolled stuff from a Portland area glass company.
Here is what the edges look like of hand-rolled glass;
The uneven edges of these panes make for a challenging job of framing them. I used clear vertical grain Douglas fir to surround and frame the glass. Above them is a shelf and two 3-pane units that will be operable windows to open for ventilation.
Below is a picture of the front wall that will hold the door.
The top arrow is pointing to a small window installed on each gable for ventilation. Not pictured yet is the acrylic roofing that will be cut to cover the rest of the gables. The other two arrows point to the shear walls on each side of the soon-to-be installed door. They are made with old barn wood and some T&G cedar. These walls stiffen the opening for the door to keep things true and plum.
The Backstory
Iโm building this for Shea Whelchel of Vancouver, Washington. She stopped by my booth at the Recycled Arts Festival in Vancouver in 2018 where I had set up a structure made for another client. We chatted a bit, I gave her a business card and I didnโt hear anything - until Spring 2021 when she called and said she had some old windows and wondered if I was available to build s greenhouse them. My reply was simple, direct and to the point; โAbsolutely!โ
As with most of these enclosures, they are portable and this is going to be on her property as soon as it is complete. This picture was taken 01/27/2022 with a lot more needing to be done before I dismantle it and take it to its new destination.
After her call, I then drove up to her place and looked over the setting of this new project (I build to suit the environment) I loaded up the old windows she mentioned and the gears started turning. It was immediately apparent to me that I will have to find more windows as these were not only too few in number, but they lacked - character - so I went looking for more interesting units. The first ones I found looked promising, they were these 6, 8-pane units advertised on the web. Described as being in โgood conditionโ, I bit. They were way the the heck down in Amity, Oregon, and from St. Helens, that is a half-a-day round trip and THIS is what I find;
Now, I drove all that way so Iโm not about to get short changed. We negotiated a still-too-high a price and off I went with six units to begin the concept. Although it took nearly a month to completely redo these windows, things should have been completed by the fall of 2022, but I ran into a lot of medical issues that put me in the hospital more than once (no, it wasnโt โThe Vidโ) and it took me a while to recover. Now with the weather being soโฆ Northwest Oregon-ish, it is hard to get much done. For instance I can not leave the inside of these old windows get wet as that will lift the glazing compound, loosen the glue and just make everything go to pieces. Anyway, it has taken waaaaaaay too long to get this far, but Shea has been a very patient angel over this. Anyway, I took those ratty old windows, did a complete overhaul and put in lots of unusual glass. I removed every speck of old glazing compound, and rot and restored these to glory;
Once I start on something I canโt let it go, and these kept getting nicer and nicer tthe more I worked on them.
With the six corner windows established and the sides complete, the pattern was beginning to take shape. I had some old wooden garage door panels that had never been installed, so I cut them to size for a footprint of 7โ wide X 7โ 9โ long. I plugged the bracket hardware mounting holes with dowels, sanded, sealed and applied several coats of satin finish Spar Varnish (polyurethane). Now I have the basis of a glass enclosure made with old, existing windows. That process takes an agonizingly long time to visualize - the puzzle of working with a finite space, with finite pieces;
Once the main structure is established, it was time to roll trusses! I usually go with a lighter wood such as cedar and rip it to 2โ X 3โ but, have you looked at the price of, not just any wood, but cedar? Itโs enough to make a man of faith curse! So standard stud fir it is. I did pick through a unit of 2โ X 4โ and found some nice CVG, set them on the flat surface of the covered porch and let them dry. I then figured the pitch, bird-mouthed the rafter tails, added a collar-tie to the middle truss and notched the top surfaces to accommodate 1โ X 4โ cross-member fir. Even THAT was ridiculous expensive!
The weather started giving me a break so I can get the roof on. I canโt find ridge-cap just yet, but efforting. Thereโs something really neat about being inside a greenhouse, the panorama, the echo from glass walls, the clear roofโฆ it all adds up to a unique experience. If I had the wherewithal and time, I would have preferred using old grid windows for the roof and cover it with flat polycarbonate sheeting for a more aesthetic look, but it was decided that this corrugated polycrylic roofing material would fit the budget - and I was lucky to find it!
Febuary - I still need to make a living and have been stalling clients for as long as I dare, so over the first two weeks of this month I had to make 65 frames, an indoor loft ladder access and take care of some peronal budiness. I just got that green glass so making those windows for the back end will be my first step starting around 02/15/2022.
So, here is where things are as of today. Here are several dozen GoG substrates in frames being made with lots more to go. (Glass on Glass mosaic frames) This is how I pay th bills. If you would like to see more posts such as this, where I get really granular in my thinking and construction process, please subscribe and feel free to comment below!
Stay tuned, more updates to come as I have to make the gable windows and the ones that will open in the back wall. I also need to hang the door and make barn-wood panels on the front. If you would like to see what Iโm up to, please subscribe and you might be pleased to see how I build these without any internal framing, so, smash that subscribe button, or bother me with a commentI do have a web presence at Neoteric Wood Art which has a even more of my junk published on it. You wonโt find me doing much on Facebook anymore, Substack is where adults publish and consume content without censorship. Not that I publish anything more than my work, it is just the idea of giving Zuccerbot my business that really grinds my gears. Thanks for visiting, please come back soon!