The Ribshack

At one time we had a Burmese Albino Python as a semi permanent house guest.

I built a nice bedroom for him from a pair of 4x8 picture windows and after we nursed him back to health he grew to a little over ten feet and developed a body odor issue that couldn't be ignored, so we asked him to move out.

We found a nice herpetologist in Orange County who did reptile shows at elementary schools and Boots now lives down there, presumably happy with his other little reptile friends. We fed him fat live rats (Discovery Channel live!) and last we heard his diet had graduated to live rabbits. It sounds gruesome, but this breed of snake won't eat anything it doesn't kill first.

Boots

In the meantime, his bedroom got closed up inside the north wall of the studio after a good cleaning.

Last summer, Spock and Paula came out for a few days and in a flash of brilliance I decided we should to a proper job on that section of wall since I had an extra set of hands for a few days, so we attacked the wall with vigor and knocked it out in three days. Another blog, another day.

So I've been staring at these two windows stashed behind the studio for almost a year now and decided they were too good an opportunity to just toss out, so I dragged them out front.

2 windows

After 16 cups of coffee and examining the different aluminum extrusions, I attacked with the hacksaw and cut down the frames to accommodate the center panes. Hack, whack, re-assemble with fresh Tek screws.

center frames

I found a 12 ft 2x12 left over from the front porch project and whacked a pair of lengths that fit the width of the frames and attached those first with some plastic coated deck screws.

cut box
screw rail

Just guessing my way through this, I balanced both panels behind and in front of the shelf I planned to use inside the greenhouse and attached one of the slider windows on top with more Tek screws.

screw top

Yeah, that was a little wobbly, but I pressed on. I didn't know what the exact length on the box ends was going to be so I attached one more slider to the end with 4 Tek screws.

screw side

A couple of clamps later I had a good measurement and cut the ends for the box.

box ends

I attached both ends with 3 inch drywall screws using a pilot hole. Then I rolled the whole thing up on a length of PVC pipe, set some nail-on furniture glides underneath and stepped down on it hard. This will keep the bottom edge off the ground and let water run under it.

feets

Things were starting to stiffen up. I found a couple of pieces of redwood leftover from the build on the garage doors and cut up some flooring, again using the 3 inch drywall screws with a pilot hole. Pilot holes are your friends. They prevent splitting wood. Usually.

floor

Moving on, I grabbed another handful of Teks and added another slider to the opposite end.

other end

Aha! Brilliant you say!

Bubba's built a box with no doors!

But I'm unstoppable. I went to the hardware store and laid out the first chunk of cash for this project and came home with $26 worth of chrome plated piano hinge. A little trim, a handful of pop rivets and I had two doors.

hinge

So I spun it around, slid the shelf in and the interesting part of this project is done.

ready for paint

A little Windex, a coat of paint to preserve the wood and I'll be ready to grow some of those special plants (when the law allows) and hot house cherry tomatoes in the meantime.

So there's my first DIY/Recycle blog post. Hope you don't find it as boring as my helper did.

just throw the damn ball will ya