Well, it took two more evenings to complete the hoop house. First Nate cut a couple of PVC pipes into two foot lengths and glued them to the other pipes making them longer.

Next, he removed the twine from the four posts

and replaced it with this.

Then we attached short lengths of twine to one row of rebar and the longer lengths to the other row.

Nate placed the PVC over the rebar and

slowly walked along bending the PVC to fit over the opposite rebar.

The PVC fit into the precut holes and over the rebar on each end wall.

When all the ribs were in place he took another length of PVC and began taping it to the center of each rib.

It took two lengths of pipe to complete the spine.

At the opposite end, he sawed off the excess before taping to the final rib.

He also duct taped the pipe to the corners of each end wall.

That’s as far as we got until Friday.

On Friday evening we rolled out the greenhouse plastic along the length of the structure and then some before cutting it. We should have gone another two feet–you’ll see why later.

The plastic should nearly touch the ground when you get it spread over the pipes. We were a little short. Creative- engineer-as-you-go is Nate’s specialty. We still need to get some greenhouse plastic tape to finish it up. Anyway …

Next we secured the plastic by throwing over a couple of the long twine ropes and tying them to their corresponding shorter twine partner.

And posted a child on this corner …

and one on this corner and a wife on another.

Then Nate brought over a pile of these

and began cutting out the plastic about six or eight inches inside the door frame.

Then he folded the plastic around a wood slat

and screwed it into the frame.

He repeated the process for the sides

and the bottom.

Then we secured the remaining lengths of twine.

You should cover your door(s) with plastic before you mount them. There it is! All done! So exciting! Nate quickly set up our drip watering system inside and

we planted our tomato and pepper plants. We haven’t decide if we’re putting a door in the far end or a vent window so we draped a piece of plastic over the opening for now. Here’s the link for step-by-step instructions, and this is a link to a video clip showing a hoop house in action.