Hi fellow Hiveians,
Today I wanted to share one of the most fun things I've done recently: build our own homemade wooden toy box!
Santa's Workshop
It felt a lot like Santa's workshop in our living room this past weekend. My wife asked me about what we could do to make our living room more organized with the little man's toys. They make a mess pretty much every single day lol so we knew we needed to do something. The first step was installing shelves on pretty much every available wall in the living room. This was a big help at getting stuff off the floor but it didn't solve completely the storage issue.
So I wanted to build something, but wasn't entirely sure what to do. When we recently chopped up and got rid of our couches, we had a spare piece of plywood that used to be on the couch. The springs got wrecked a year or two back from sitting on it so we put a piece of plywood in there to buffer it. It worked great but then we got rid of the couches. Being a DIY fan, I knew not to get rid of such a great piece of wood! Especially because it was 3/4 inch plywood, stuff is durable!
We went to Home Depot this weekend and bought the supplies needed. It was a rainy and snowy day so it was perfect weather to get some stuff together and work in the house! I got a few pieces of 11/32 and 15/32 plywood for the sides and ends to complete the job. We also bought a few 2x4 pieces of pine lumber. Hilarious enough, I ran out of it all but searched the house and found more!
So I didn't have any formal plans in mind other than it was going to be a big toy box lol. Thankfully they sell the plywood sheets in universal sizes like this. It is 2 feet wide by 4 feet long. They also sell 2 foot square sheets which was great for the ends.
So it came time to start measuring up the plywood for where I would roughly cut it. I put the butt end of it flush with the end of the plywood and then at the other end where the lumbar was, I made a mark to cut. I probably could have been more exact with tape measures and crap but I like to work efficient and this was pretty efficient!
Once I had the rough measurements, and my helper ready to draw some lines, we used the square to make them guaranteed straight lines.
Step one complete, get the base boarded up! This was an important piece because this is where the walls will screw into and we had to make sure this was nice and sturdy. I was very happy with how doing the rough measurements came out! There was barely any space in some of the cuts which was nice.
The other thing I had to make sure to do was leave plenty of space for other screws that were planned on being drilled in. Since the complete box was going to have lots of wood and screws in it, it was a bit challenging but it was the fun of it for me. Trying to think on my feet to put it together was a lot of fun! I had to make sure that the end piece there had enough for a 3 inch screw to go through a piece of plywood and sit right into the board without being too short. It added a pretty good amount of strength there.
Wall one was complete! I wasn't crazy about the boards I bought, they were pretty warped but that's what you get often when you go to big hardware stores. I can't blame them though, the wood is pretty well priced considering what it takes to produce it. What I did was put a few screws in the middle of the bottom of the board and screw it into the 2x4 in more spots and it tightened it right up flush.
You can see how the additional screws sucked the wall in very nicely here. I also started to construct the support beams for the walls to screw into. I messed up a little bit on the configuration of them, the bottom one should have been facing the other direction but that's okay, maybe it gives it good strength to be set differently, I don't know. The long side of the board though is what got the 3 inch screws so you can see the direction it was going. I alternated the 3 inch screws. Two went into the board that made the bottom of the L shape. In the top right corner here, the screw that was only single was the one going down towards me. The one that had two was the one going to the left. Not sure if anyone really cares about that detail but I thought it was nice to give it some solid cross-strength bracing.
It's almost done! I had all the walls up and I had most of the cross braces up. At this point I ran out of wood so I thought I would have to put it off another day but hilariously enough, our son loves using lumber so I bought a bunch but he stashed some! LOL I found two more 6 foot sections of lumber in my wife and I's closet that he hid at one point hahaha so that was a great find. Turns out it was exactly what I needed!
One of the fun things that came out of it all was that our son now got some really small pieces to play with. Before he would have a couple 3 or 4 foot pieces of lumbar that he would set up all over the living room. He almost broke a lot of stuff playing with it but wouldn't give it up. Once I told him we were going to build something though, he was very excited and eagerly wanted to see what it would make! This toy box can now practically survive a collision with a car lol it's SOLID. One downside is I'm the only one that can move it hahaha so hopefully once we get to a point where we move, our son will be old and strong enough to help me!
This was definitely one of the most fun little projects I've undertaken recently, our son absolutely loved helping. I've got a few precious pictures of the little man that won't make it on here but we are definitely going to frame some of them!
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