This post deals with all the holes I had to fill before the greenhouse was essentially done. I did this work from early January to mid to late February. It is important to note that I didn't plan how to fill these holes ahead of time. I just handled each individual blank space as a different problem, and thus came up with different solutions. In every wall of the greenhouse, the windows we had installed were not enough to make a solid wall. The openings varied widely in size.
Like this one.
And this one on the south wall (from the inside). Those bottles at the bottom show where the opening was (sorry no good pic from when it wasn't yet filled up). There was a 4 inch wide vertical space that I needed to fill.
With different blank spaces I decided to do different things. With the south facing wall, I chose to fill the vertical space with bottles and mortar.
This is what it looks like from the inside.
On the east facing wall, I put a fan in the upper corner, and had a local glass shop cut some pieces to size to make a long triangular double paned window out of 2x4''s.
Here is the fan.
And this is the window and the fan both put in.
I also had glass cut to make a small window on the north side. I may end up tearing this window out if the small fan I have fails to do a good job of air exchange, and I'll put a 16'' fan in this space. Hopefully it won't come to that.
On the north side at the bottom, I mortared in large pebbles, stones from a local creek, and brick pieces that I had found in the ground, apparently from the construction of the house I live in (back in the late 50's I think.) Of course I haven't done the acid wash to clean off extra mortar yet, but it's basically done.
I did the same with the four openings on the west wall. You'll notice there is a pattern from the bricks common to both openings. Four half bricks and one whole brick in the middle.
I also had two odd openings at the top of the western wall. So I filled them with stone and mortar. Good idea? Who knows.
I had never mortared anything with stone, but I once worked as a hodpacker on a brick crew composed entirely of Mexicans (there was one white guy for a time (Ray) who essentially lived out of his car). From mixing the mortar, hauling the bricks, and placing the mortar for the brick layers, I knew some of the basic principles, but I didn't realize exactly how much I knew, because it was all theoretical before I laid my first brick. I had never handled a trowel and actually laid brick, but once I started, it was as if I could remember the sounds of scraping mortar across the bricks and from the edging work (9 years ago). So apparently you can just watch or apparently listen to anything for long enough and basically learn it. In any case, I felt like I could get pretty good at brick work or mortared stone work reasonably fast.
As far as windows go, I don't know that I possess such an art. I wouldn't count myself as a decent carpenter. And carpentry seems like a big part of making windows. For some reason it doesn't excite me to work with wood as much as it does stone. This is perhaps because I do not comprehend the myriad possibilities inherent in woodworking (when one has the right tools). But wood is relatively fleeting compared to stone. However, I'm not sure this justifies my shoddy carpentry work. I am learning, I just have no passion for it.
And for the hell of it, here is a recent pic of my garden wall. BTW, I need to build 8-9 feet of wall this weekend. Anyone want to learn?
