Building a (green)House

Yesterday was one of those spectacular spring days full of energy, blue skies and improbable good luck. The late morning found us in Bluffton where we were snapping photographs for a secret project I'm working on. We were slowing walking around town, noticing little details and ducking in random shops looking for small treasures. As we were ready to head home I wanted to go in the direction of the University to take a couple of stills. Turning the corner onto Lawn Avenue I nearly threw us both through the windshield of the car putting it into park as we both saw a pile of old windows leaning casually against a telephone pole.

Now, I've never been too proud to take other people's junk and Ali is quickly overcoming her reluctance as I coax her over to the dark side. (I'm quite sure this little personality quirk comes from my dad. He made regular trips to "the dump" when I was a kid and came home with all kinds of treasurers that he repurposed* around our house and yard!) As we hopped out of the car, making a beeline for the windows, a man was come out his front door smiling at us.

"Are these your windows?" I asked with a grin.

"They sure are!"

"Do you still want them?"

"Nope! That's why they are out here. I hear that crafty-type people love old windows so you're welcome to them! If you want to drive by again tomorrow I will have some single pane ones out here if you want them too!"

Before he had even gotten those three sentences out of his mouth we already had all seven windows safely in the back of the Mountaineer and were headed out of town – giddy with our good fortune.

After some measuring, painting, drilling, screwing and three (yes! three. . . we're constuction rookies!) trips to the hardware store we now have this::

Three of the four "wall" windows were four inches shorter than the fourth one. We solved that by cutting three sections out of a 2x4 and painting them white before attaching them to the bottom of the windows. That evened them up with the fourth larger one. The top is hinged in place and all the windows are secured together with large "L" brackets.

Not only are we excited about using it to start seeds in the very early spring, I'm imagining fresh lettuce in February, basil all year round. . . oh, the possibilities! Oh yeah, we're also quite proud of our construction skills! And as an added bonus – the whole thing cost less than $10. . .if you don't count the cost of three trips to the hardware store!

*repurpose - squeezing extra and/or clever things out of everyday objects. Lifehacker is one of my favorite inspirational websites for ideas.