Reading Nook / Indoor Play Fort - 335

hey folks like guys doing hope you are all having a great day today now through the Christmas season I made several gifts that I did not record a video for instead I just took cell phone pictures throughout the build process not dealing with a video camera is much faster for quick projects such as this and also I kind of wanted to take a little bit of time off during the holidays so that's what this is this is a picture video the design process for this started by searching images online for inspiration and coming up with something that the boss lady aka my wife approved the whole idea was hers and she had final approval on the design so we settled on an easy to build corner design that did not use much material kind of utilizing the two walls of the room one and a half sheets of plywood and six 8-foot two by fours is all that's needed I started with the ladder and although this can be made by using two by fours right off the shelf with no milling at all I decided to joint and plane all of the two by fours to one and a quarter inch by three inches in width not only to clean up the manufacturing mill marks but also give the latter kind of a lighter appearance to make the latter a little more inviting to the hands and feet I put a one half of an inch roundover on the front edges and a 1/4 inch roundover on the rear edges of the latter sides and the ladder rungs all of them they got a one half of an inch roundover on all of the long edges pocket hole joinery is plenty strong enough for this application each ladder rung will get two pocket holes per end pocket holes make assembly incredibly quick and all the pocket holes were facing down on the ladder rungs and the rungs were spaced evenly now I did lean this up against my workbench and tried to climb up it well I did climb up it and it held my weight with absolutely no problem I believe I made the ladder rungs about two and a half inches wide so they were inset on both the front and back of the ladder sides and the ladder platform was next to be made quick and easy once again with pocket hole screws this is just a rectangular frame with a center divider all of the plywood was cut according to my layout diagram or so I thought you can see the bottom piece of plywood in this image it's the same 48 inch width as my assembly table it wasn't supposed to be it was supposed to be ripped to a specific width but I completely forgot to do that particular cut before I did all the other decorations to the top and you'll see later on when I found out that this was a mistake my wife was very specific about wanting a castle design so the McReynolds or the notches on top of a castle there's a lot of different terms for these they were a must to make them all look the same I made a quick MDF template traced it out on to the plywood wherever needed roughed out the bulk of the waist with a jigsaw and then used a flush trim bit in my router to transfer the smooth template shape to all of the cuts the left edge of the tall plywood side will be against the wall so a notch is needed for the baseboard in the room for the plywood to fit around the baseboard and this notch is much larger than the baseboard but ascribed fit it's not necessary in this case I just needed to fit in place and it doesn't have to be perfect this isn't a built in piece of furniture it's just a cool fort that my daughter's eventually gonna outgrow and it will be removed my plan was to have a rectangular window in the large wall but I decided to go with a star theme for a little bit more of an interactive design on the short upper wall I used my CNC machine to cut three randomly placed stars and for the large wall I used the CNC to cut a template to once again use a router to transfer the cut to the plywood now all that can be done with just a jigsaw and say sandpaper or a file to clean up the cut edges but before paint I rounded all of the plywood edges with a 1/4 of an inch roundover bit and I drilled pocket holes on the backside of the short wall if you're wanting a paint recommendation color for your next mancave project then Valspar flower-girl is a must that's what we used here anyway the paint we went with was one of the more expensive options to paint and Prime all in one application and the results were surprisingly good we thought for sure because this was just bare wood that we were gonna have to it was definitely gonna have to be a two coat job but one coat actually turned out great we also painted just the short wall white for a very easy way to get a two-tone accent to the whole project the next day during my daughter's nap we started the assembly in her playroom and here's a protip for you don't use a really loud impact to drill into some wall studs while your daughter's sleeping in the next room duh Mimi did that and woke her up but first the platform frame was secured to the wall with a few 3-inch screws into the wall studs and the platform was just set in place on top both wall panels were set in place and temporarily held with clamps and this is when I realized the mistake of the large wall being too wide here you can see that the end of the short wall being right in the way of one of the top cutouts on the large wall the large wall was supposed to stick out by design but not by that much the short wall was supposed to be disguised by the tall wall luckily I had enough material to the left of the left star to cut the panel down to the appropriate width this unfortunately eliminated the design symmetry but it's really not that big of a deal nobody in the house but me actually cares about that little mistake I also pre-drilled and screwed right through the this large panel and into the frame to secure it the short wall is held in place with a clamp and secured to the tall panel with pocket hole screws from the inside face and finally the ladder is secured to both the platform frame and the other side of the short wall and I put my body weight on the ladder to compress the carpet just a little bit before positioning it that way the bottom of the ladder doesn't want to swing the ladder and the short wall with were established so that there was a one inch gap between the wall and the ladder now this 1 inch gap it allows room at the floor for the baseboards you don't have to notch the ladder in this picture I'm sitting on the platform with my back against the wall and the platform panel just secured with a few screws into the frame below the bookshelf was secured to the inside of the large wall with a few pocket hole screws and with the beanbag chair in place this project was done we decided to build this project instead of buying an indoor reading tent and we are so glad we did it really transformed the room into a great play area where she can not only sit and read which at her age it's just us reading to her and her flipping the pages but she's really interested in reading which is great reading and books in general but also a place for her to be physically interactive with her environment now of course she's too young to use the ladder on her own right now and we never let her in the playroom unsupervised but she will definitely grow into it probably much faster than what I care to think about this is when I was I was hoping to get one of those moments of hey Dad I very much appreciate this and it's so much fun to play in here and thank you so much and I love you but you know she she can barely even say a few words let alone full sentences so I guess the smile is basically the same thing I'll take it that way anyway this is a really easy project that anyone can make with just a few tools like a circular saw jigsaw miter saw at a drill and for those who are interested I do have a set of plans with a shopping list cutting list step by step 3d assembly diagrams and a link to that is in the video description if you are watching this on youtube check out my website Jay's custom creations comm and sign up for my email newsletter so you don't miss anything that I publish even the stuff that doesn't have a video to it thanks for watching and have a great day