I wrote a previous blog about our greenhouse titled Greenhouse Update that briefly covers the beginning of the greenhouse we’ve been building. That post got us up to the floor stage of the build.

Over the last month, in between the craziness of everything else going on, my husband has been working on the wall and roof material. We have a ton of dead spruce, and he’s been cutting it down, saving the large pieces to cut up for lumber, and then we burn the remaining wood for heat for all our buildings.

We have a friend who willingly lent us a saw mill, and so we have been cutting up all the large logs in our spare time. It’s been fun to watch the process, and to be able to help along the way. I love watching a tree turn into lumber (and firewood).

One of my main objects on this lumber cutting process was to film some of the process and create a YouTube video. I haven’t gotten my videos every two weeks created like I set out to do on my goals this year, but I have been filming, editing and creating.

The process for this current video took a lot more time to edit as I have to cut really long pieces of video down into more comprehensive clips and then time-lapse, because to watch the whole process and in real time would take hours. I usually film in very short chunks, I find it easier to edit that way. But for these videos, I just set up the camera and let it run.

Sawing the logs is one of the longest steps in this whole process. It just takes time to make all the wood pieces we need. Would it be easier to go buy the lumber? Yes, but my husband hates burning large trees because they can be cut up and used for more than just firewood.

Next step? Creating the timber frame pieces at the shop, and then hauling them out to the greenhouse to assemble! The wall timbers are all 6×6 except the bottom plate of the wall which is 2×6.

The roof trusses will be all 2×8’s, so after the walls are framed up, we will have to continue milling more wood to make the roof rafter pieces, but that shouldn’t take quite as long as the wall pieces. Partly because there are fewer pieces, but also, we can get more pieces out of one log, and because the learning curve has been overcome.

You can watch the sawing process on my YouTube channel here: Greenhouse Update