A new watermelon box creation!  A hideout for my two little pipsqueaks.

This little place was a lot of fun to build, and I love the idea of a hideout that’s triangular in shape.  I spent about 2 days working on this project off and on, because I had to take breaks when my arm got tired of sawing through all that cardboard.

The watermelon box I started with already had lots of holes in it, so I enlarged some of them to create my  “Swiss cheese matrix” on all three sides.

I started by figuring out the rough dimensions of the little fort by folding the box in different places until I found what worked best for a roomy wedge of cheese.

This box had about eight creased corners, so I cut cardboard strips about 6 inches wide and glued them over the unwanted creased portions so the cardboard wouldn’t bend in the places I didn’t want it to.

After securing the cardboard and cutting out all the holes from the sides, I put a nut and bolt with a washer in the side to keep everything together and make it easy to disassemble.

Last step was creating a top piece out of lighter cardboard so that the girls could open it easily.

I added a coat of yellow paint, but I think it would be just as nice plain brown.  I also thought  pink washi tape would liven up the holes, but you can see where that’s all going to end up.

I’m looking forward to the day when they’ll be building their own little cardboard nests… And hey, did I tell you where some of our other watermelon box scraps have ended up?

These came shipped in a cardboard box that we picked up at the local post office.

They’re not ours to keep.  We’re just babysitting for grandma…