It makes me extremely happy!!!!!! It is in a weird triangle at the end of the garden which previously had no use, and now I have the possibility of alfresco living all the year round! I like eating in there, very nice for hanging out with friends. My house can be a bit dark so I love being able to get loads of daylight even on overcast and cold days......and I get to grow stuff...my first growing season so full of chilli, aubergine basil and tomato plants...oh, yes and a vine that my daughter gave me.
My glasshouse started as a twinkle in my eye, and took about a year to come together. I hauled most of the materials out of skips...all the sash windows, the doors, the slate for the path, and most of the timber. I didn't compromise on the timber for the framework however and that was my main expenditure. I've used driftwood I collected in Cornwall and a couple of stained glass windows from a junk shop.Oh yes, and my best break was to come across a lovely guy in a company who maintain bus shelters, who 'got' my project and gave me the 6mm perspex for the roof that had been ripped out of a bus shelter in Devon!!! I had been quoted £600 for the perspex and couldn't afford that, and besides it was against my ethos for this project. It has been a collaboration from start to finish, a first build for me, with input form friends and family from start to finish, fueled with food and beer, and the occasional barter for a weekend in my waggon in Wales...(.another story!) I couldnt have dreamed that I would be as happy with it as I am, particularly as so many people have hand a hand in it. The finishing touch was my Dad giving me the potbellied stove for a Christmas present, and a local company letting me have some ducting to act as a flue for a song!