This is my first fully portable enclosure and second one I ever built, and I did it on spec. Kathie and I took this unit to a couple locations in order to demonstrate its features and to try and sell it… ahem… Well, there certainly was a lot of interest, but there were no buyers. Then one weekend, I rented a space in the 2016 Columbia County Home & Garden Show where it languished on Saturday and most of Sunday, BUT… lo and behold, late in the day, Elaine Kelly, an astonishingly hard working woman who is highly knowledgeable in all thing botanical, she walks up and says she wants to buy it! No longer in despair, I jump for joy! She even ropes me into setting the gravel and brick base where it is to sit.
She grows plants chiefly native to Oregon, plus other things to help sustain areas where nature could use a bit of help, such as raising milkweed that is crucial to the Monarch Butterfly. She does shows all over the place selling her plants.
Another method of keeping things together, this unit began my crazy obsession of making as many of these “no tools needed” assembly. The nuts and bolts were one of the few things I actually had to buy new in order to create this, otherwise, it is made about 99.8% recycled materials.
The roof is interesting. A friend gave me several pieces of 1/4” Lexan (Plexiglas of the average lexicon) which came from a discarded display somewhere. There were enough pieces to just BARELY make the distance, but they were only 12” X 48”. After some head-scratching, I came up with the idea of using 2-faced tape, the really strong kind used in window installation, and run a strip for each one like “fish scales” and fasten them down with grommet screws - and it really, really worked! And still does work!
This is how I acquire much of my building materials. Most decks may appear weather damaged beyond having an value, but flip over the board nd you will discover that there is still plenty of ‘life’ left in it!