Progress on the fort

The DH and I worked very hard this weekend on the fort for our oldest son's birthday. We started out by clearing out the yucky, dirty shed. You can see those photos here.



We started by framing in a new floor with 2X4s. The old floor was completely rotted out.







Then we cut and nailed down 2 sheets of OSB (particle board) on top of our floor frame.






Then we cut windows into the two side walls between the studs. Next, we covered the studs with another sheet of OSB and cut out the window holes. We did this to create interior walls since the walls were just bare studs. We had removed the two original doors. So our next job was to frame in a new front wall with 2X4s. You can see the front wall frame here along with the new interior walls and windows.





We had bought some 1X3s to frame out the inside windows. I used 1X2s on the chicken coop windows and miter-cut the corners. This time I wanted to use wider boards and I used straight cuts. I thought this type of frame was more appropriate for a fort. :0) I am happy to say that I completely made the window frames by myself including cutting them with the circular saw (I like to feel really cool and channel my inner Amy Wynn when I use the power tools) and hammering them on.

We added a new front wall to half of the front frame, again using OSB. The other side will have a screen door which we have not yet built.

After doing all the above, I spent almost all of Monday afternoon painting the interior. I have a paint tip to share. Pay close attention: DO NOT SKIMP ON PAINT. I had bought a cheaper kind of interior paint to paint the inside walls. After priming them with KILZ, I started to paint the first coat of interior paint. I figured it would take 2 coats because I needed 2 on the coop to really cover the OSB well. As soon as I rolled a few strokes I could see that it was really thin and would take many coats to cover well. I was not in the mood to paint multiple coats after priming the whole thing. Luckily I found some leftover cream-colored Behr paint from a previous project. I'm telling you right now.......Behr paint rocks. This paint had been sitting in our basement for a few years at least. And all I had to do was stir it up a bit. It completely covered the primer coat in ONE COAT.

The next two photos show what the interior looks like with its new paint job. A vast improvement over the nasty old shed interior we started with.

We have quite a bit left to do, but it's getting there. We still need to frame out and paint the door, finish the window shutters, and put flooring down. When we're done, this will be such an awesome playspace for our boys. I can't wait until it's finished.

Our weekend project

Since my DH and I now consider ourselves to be really great carpenters after our chicken coop construction project we are tackling another building project this weekend. Our oldest son will turn 8 soon and hasn't given us very many good ideas for what he wants for his birthday. So......we are turning another shed on our property into a fort for him (and his little brother). This shed is stuck back to back with the one we used to build the coop. So we will pretty much just imitate the steps we took to construct the coop. It should be pretty cool when it's finished. Yesterday we (mostly DH) cleared out the inside. You can see that there was a bunch of stuff in there. It has now been designated to the trash heap or to another storage area on our property. DH had to liberally spray down a few wasp nests with the bug killer spray. Today we are going to start construction. Hopefully it will go quickly, but it seems that these projects always take longer than you think they will. I will definitely post photos of the process. It is really dirty and gross in there right now. The floor is completely rotted out, so we'll start by framing in and laying a new floor. The whole interior will be primed and painted white which will make a HUGE difference in how it looks.







Here's what it looked like after we cleared it out and DH removed the existing doors. We'll frame in a new front wall with a screen door.