I need your help for roommakeover
manonpaquay
6 years ago
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mnmamax3
6 years agolast modified: 6 years agoAnnie Deighnaugh
6 years agolast modified: 6 years agoRelated Discussions
I need your help with an idea I have for a Commercial Greenhouse
Comments (16)Sorry this may ramble a bit, but so much is going through my little head right now, I'm just letting it out as I think of it. This is bringing up lots of memories of when my dad started out with a small lean-to on the side of the house to sell tomato plants 35 years ago. That business grew several times until we had a single 40 X 50 greenhouse that took up the entire back yard. We now have 5 acres and multiple greenhouses at another location that I have run since 1997 and now produce and sell over 100,000 plants per season. So this is coming from a grower/retailer perspective. Check that you can sell items that aren't grown in your greenhouse. I have to grow 75% of what I sell on site in my zoning. Buy a greenhouse with the appropriate snow load/wind rating for your area. It doesn't take much wet snow to collapse a poorly designed greenhouse. I have two from a Canadian company-Harnois (the third is from a company that I think and hope are now out of business-they were awful to deal with). They were easy to put up and have worked great for us. The last one I bought (30 x 48-which probably the minimum you should consider) was about $7,000 nearly 10 years ago. This price included one heater and three roll up motors and two layers of plastic. I had to build my own end walls to save a little money but you can buy an endwall package separately. You will need electricity for the roll up vents (side and peak) and for the ignition for gas heater(s). But that requirement would be less than for exhaust fans for a ghs with no vents. I wouldn't risk my plants in somebody else's greenhouse that couldn't keep them heated if needed. Nor would I trust my hard work to a greenhouse made from PVC. You need one large enough that people can walk around comfortably and accommodate each vendor. Hoop houses generally don't have a lot of head room along the sides unless you get a high tunnel. If you expect the business to grow get a greenhouse that may be a little larger/wider than you think you need. Otherwise you will be replacing the small one real soon-kind of a waste of money. We went from lots of small greenhouses to a couple larger greenhouses to the single large house and now several large greenhouses. Buy something that is intended to be a greenhouse-you don't want to be jerry rigging something that might not work as expected. There are plenty of professional greenhouse manufacturers (Nexus, Atlas, Jaderloon, Conley, Harnois,etc) out there that will help you. They also will have the proper materials to use and be able to provide you with some guidance. You'll be much happier and the product will probably last a lot longer. Check out Greenhouse auction This is a past auction that still has 450,000 square feet of greenhouse left from a bankrupt nursery. They will arrange shipping for a fee. My hoop houses (20 x 48 & 17 x 48) are open at one end where I can pull the plastic up or lower it to get air and cool off the house. The other end has a regular sized door. The larger one is made so I can pull up the sides about 2 feet off the ground using ropes. Even when fully open, they get 100F + by late May or about 20-30ºF warmer than outside. I use these to hold plants-no customers allowed. Trust me, nobody wants to stay in those conditions for very long-customers or vendors. I also would be leery of the pest issue. Even if everyone has 100% pest free plants (extremely unlikely IMHO) you will get pests. Who will be responsible, and what kind of controls will you use? Preventative or curative? An ornamental grower will have different requirements than an a veggie or herb grower. You may have to have separate greenhouses and spray equipment etc. This idea opens you up to additional liability. If somebody else's plants are lost in your facility you'd better have insurance! Of course you should have insurance if the public will be on your property anyway (a hidden cost and a selling point to potential vendors) $25,000 is not a lot of money. You will run into lots of unexpected costs. Will you have to make other improvements to accommodate the public and vendors-like bathroom facilities? How quickly do you expect to get a return on your money? The people who you should listen to as far as the type of structure are the people who would be using it. What are their needs and concerns? Taking the plastic off in the winter raises a few comments/questions. I assume that you would recover in the late winter/early spring. I don't know about your area but in mine that time of the year is the worst time to try to stretch a huge piece of plastic because most days are breezy. It takes only the slightest breeze to fill a greenhouse cover like a giant sail. You have to do the job when there is no breeze otherwise, you will be miserable trying. It is also a job for several people. The larger the greenhouse the harder it is to cover. Although easier to cover a small greenhouse heats up extremely quickly and has other disadvantages as well. $10 a day is a lot to pay for a vendor-farmers markets in our area cost $50 for the whole season (May thru November, one day per week). Maybe you should charge for the whole season instead of by the day. Or do both but give a discount if they pay for the whole season up front. That gives them an additional incentive to show up everyday. You have to convince your vendors that you have something to offer for their money. And it needs to be something they can't do on their own and will make them money. Find out what they expect and need and then offer that to them. What would the advantage be to have their plants in your greenhouse if they have their own already. Is this advantage worth them paying a little extra money to you? Who will take care of promoting the market? Pay for advertising? Hope this helps!...See MoreI have a dilemna. I need your help.
Comments (19)I have seen homes with what the builder called a "bonus room" that could be finished out later. They are usually off a hallway and closed out, used as walk-in attic space until someone decides they have a greater need for the space finished out. I don't think anyone would offer less for a home like that than another 4 BR home of similar square footage and other features. In fact, they might offer more because of the easy access to seasonal storage and easy conversion to another room if they need it. I wouldn't expect to be able to sell it as a 5BR with the higher square footage though. It would compare with 4BR 2500 sq ft homes but have easy access storage space (called a TX basement here) or a potential additional room -- a bit of a bonus, but likely no as much as that space finished out. It sounds like you are underwater now -- the house is worth less than when you bought it. Finishing out the space may or may not change that. I think what happens in the marketplace will make a greater difference on your bottom line, but I don't see that you couldn't expect to get at least the $6K back at resale. I'm in TX, not the NE, so its a very different market, but 400 sq ft could add $40,000 - $60,000 to the price of a newer and/or custom home in a good neighborhood ($100-150 sq ft). If you added a bathroom, the price could go up another $10,000 or more. But that assumes there is a demand for larger homes with more rooms and that the house wouldn't be overbuilt for your neighborhood in terms of BRs and sq footage. The other thing I would consider is that you have different market trends -- smaller and more efficient houses on the one hand and homes for larger families and extended families on the other. Yours might play well into the later with more rooms for families with a lot of children or space for mom and/or dad when they can't be living on their own. That's something that's hard to put a value on (though senior care can be $3-6K month or more), but I've personally known several families who have had those place for Mom & Dad searches. For them, the right place was priceless. The question is whether your neighborhood is attractive to the families that will face those issues in 5-10 years. If not, having a built-in storage room might be the more attractive option....See MoreI Need Your Help-I went to a Kitchen Designer Today :o
Comments (42)We are in the final stages of building our home. It has taken me two solid years of searching for the right person to do my cabinets. I've interviewed several, and I even wasted some money by starting to work with a couple who claimed they were on the same page as I was but who weren't......as by their push for what "they" liked and thought I should have. I stuck to my guns and kept searching. I do not like staggered cabinets but they were continually being pushed on me. They didn't know how to deal with a large vintage style sink I am using. They kept wanting to line all of them up like lawyer office cabinets, crowd my window trim, etc. I gave up and figured I would use metal cabinets and a couple of tables until I found the right person. Finally one Saturday my husband was doing a search to find Conestoga cabinets so we could purchase some and put them in ourselves. By then I had sketched out what I wanted, but still needed a skilled person to figure the dimensions, etc. Well, we found someone. A treasure of a husband and wife team who make custom cabinets. She has an art degree and has considerable experience in restoring vintage kitchens. She saw immediately what I wanted and we are like twins in our thinking. She made sure she understood how I cook. We now only have minor tweaking in a few details and we are ready to start work. The reason for my long winded story here is to encourage you to follow your heart no matter how long it takes to find the right person. Do not settle. It can be frustrating, time consuming, and very tiring, but it has been more than worth it. I will get up every day for the rest of my life loving this kitchen. Loving your kitchen will inspire you to cook wonderful things in it. Something you don't love will irritate you the rest of your life. Also, be wary of anyone wanting a chunk of money ahead of even talking to you and starting a design. You have no way of knowing if that person will listen to you and you can work together. It is fair for someone to not release a design you like without compensation, but we have lost several thousand dollars on people who claimed they would design something nice, knew what I wanted, but as soon as the check was cashed they could have cared less. The lady I am working with now never asked for a cent up front. Sandy...See MorePaint Colors Help - I Need Your Help
Comments (1)Before you begin to select paint colors, I would replace the pendants over the island and the fixture over the table. The scale is all wrong for your room and the new fixtures will change the quality of light in the room at night. All the black and dark flooring is really eating up light in these spaces....See MorePatricia Colwell Consulting
6 years agopeanutmcgee
6 years agoJanie Gibbs-BRING SOPHIE BACK
6 years agoJustDoIt
6 years agoaprilneverends
6 years agolast modified: 6 years agodecoenthusiaste
6 years agolaughablemoments
6 years ago
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