As I had mentioned before, I decided to start work on the dog kennel greenhouse, with the main reason being that it will actually use up a lot of scrap material I had laying around the backyard area in the form of corrugated sheet metal and the parts to the frames of the old portable garages I disassembled a while ago. I figured that I should have enough corrugated metal to cover at least two walls. I would have to overlap some of the panels as they weren't long enough to cover the span from top to bottom but with an overlap that puts the top piece over the bottom piece, it will shed water better and not allow water to get to the inside of the greenhouse.
The first thing I had to do was some landscaping though. I had to cut the grass on the inside of the kennel since it needs to be gone prior to me making the floor and I had to cut the grass around the east side fence line where the kennel sits. All of the area around the kennel would have to be cleared so I can get the panels up without getting weeds and high grass caught up in between the kennel and the sheet metal panels. I spent a fair amount of time with the weed eater cutting all of this grass from inside and around the outside of the kennel.
I started off with the east fence line/east side of the dog kennel. I had to pull the old garden fence away to expose the dog kennel walls first. Since the bottom of the chicken wire was kind of sunk in the dirt and pretty well anchored, I just pulled the Tracker around and using a tow chain wrapped around a small portion of the old fence and hooked to the Tracker's hitch I snatched the old fencing from the ground along with one of the old fence posts, more than enough to fully expose the east wall of the dog kennel and even open up a small path that would allow me to move around the entirety of the dog kennel greenhouse.
From there I started hanging panels. I would attach the two panels together for the ones that would need to be overlapped, then put the pair against the side of the dog kennel to mark where the top of the kennel wall was so I can trim down the corrugated sheet metal and have the newly made wall panel set for bolting down. Once the panel was trimmed down I used some of the batch of self tapping screws with the impact driver to hand the panel up, anchoring to the dog kennel's tubing that's used to hold the chain link fencing up on it. After doing this a few times I finally got to some panels of sheet metal that were long enough to cover the side of the dog kennel without overlapping with another panel. A couple of panels even needed to be trimmed down a little bit because they were too long. I hung the panels up first then trimmed them down with the die grinder to finish them off. From there I did the same thing on the southern wall of the dog kennel. Now the biggest reason for me doing these two walls was because when I do start hanging fence panels over this area, the eastern fence will fully cover up the eastern wall of the dog kennel greenhouse while the wood fencing for the garden on the southern fence line will do the same for that wall of the greenhouse. The unsightly overlapping and multicolored panels will be fully covered by wood fencing so no one will really know just how gaudy the thing looks at this point. At least then I can get complete panels for the exposed sides of the greenhouse so when I hang those at least the structure will look a little decent. After getting the southern wall completed I still had just enough metal paneling to get one small section of the western wall covered. Of course this was an overlapping section of panels but what will end up happening here is the idea that I'll probably spray paint over this metal to make it all one color, along with the new metal when I do get some and hang it just as well. Just as I figured, I'd have enough metal to cover two walls completely and in this case had enough to get started on the third wall. Since I ran out of usable corrugated metal and don't have any prospects of getting any more any time soon, I will be moving on to the roof frame so I can use up those materials just as well and get a good idea of what I can do next within the greenhouse. I can see where I would need to hang mounts for holding things like grow lights or water lines for irrigation and conduits for electrical outlets for the grow lights and even heaters for the winter. Even after I get the roof done I will most likely start going through my other scrap materials to start making some more raised bed gardens and even hydroponic gardens to line the walls of the kennel greenhouse since the whole purpose of this structure is to be able to grow things through the winter months. There will be more to come as progress is made on this project.
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