Mi caja del refrigerador es su casa

Whenever Archie and Jessica are over, Eamon and Magda invariably end up in her house shaped toybox; crammed together and peeking out through the roof. Well that tiny thing just won't do for my daughter, will it? Luckily, when we got a new refrigerator last summer, I had the foresight to keep the box (which, as luck would have it, the delivery guys kept in once piece), thinking that some day I'd make a toy house out of it. A couple of weeks ago I did a small scale mockup to get an idea of how to make the whole thing fit together.

So during the Superbowl weekend, when Jfer was out of town, I started my architectural project. I converted the box into the basic house shape with a 45° roof gable. Unfortunatelly I ended up with a building that's maybe a foot taller than it should be -- I guess Magda isn't as tall as I thought she was.

The following week I painted the walls with the paint we recently used on our house -- it did an excelent job using a single coat and ended up looking a bit like stucco. A few days later I did the roof with the red paint we used on our door -- which kind of sucked, since it didn't fully cover even after two coats.

Today I cut out the doors and windows and scored the hinges for the doors and shutters. Magda got to test drive it for the first time. At first she was afraid of the house but was eager to join in when Jfer crawled inside.

I still have lots of work to do: tape over the hinges, paint the door, shutters and trim dark green, and maybe buy some more paint and give the roof another coat or two. And then I'll need to add velcro in strategic places to make the house a little more secure and to be able to keep the shutters in an open position.