At last! At long last, the greenhouse has a new French door! Let me remind you of what the greenhouse looked like last year before I tackled the restoration project:

I don’t think that the greenhouse had been used in quite a few years. Of course, I immediately fell in love with it!

Here is the ‘almost-finished’ project last spring. The last thing it needed was a new door. The old is was hollow and had a family of bats living in it. All summer long, whenever I was working in the greenhouse I could hear them scratching away in there.

Not too long ago, my wonderful friend B found this French door in his sister’s garage. As it was no longer needed he brought it over to the cabin, cut it down to size and moved the door knob from the old door to this new door.

Installing it was a challenge as there wasn’t a single straight or level line in this ramshackle building! Thankfully, B was up to the task with chisels and planes! Once the door was installed, I applied two coats of primer, two coats of exterior black paint and a bead of black exterior-grade caulking around the windows, inside and out (again, using painter’s tape on the glass for this task to get a perfectly straight line).

I spent yesterday afternoon vacuuming cobwebs and washing the entire building inside and out. Then polished up the windows and installed a small hook and latch to keep the door from blowing open (the latch of the old knob doesn’t always catch). As you can see, the glass door will let in much more light. I will build a few bat houses to install nearby as I really do appreciate them.

Finally, I planted the plants! This year I put in cherry tomatoes, two types of roma tomatoes, many herbs (especially basil), and a variety of salad greens in the back as they don’t mind partial shade. I also reserved an small area for my friend E who is going to have her own bit of garden space and will plant some of her own seeds next time she comes over.

Now onto the Medicine Wheel garden project where today I am building raised beds…:)