Cardboard Playhouse

Hello to all of you out there in blogland! I know it's been a while since I've posted but I assure you I have not been idle :) I have been working on several projects and I finally have one finished to share, it's my cardboard playhouse. King Daddy's parents got a new double oven for their kitchen and asked me if I wanted the box. As I'm sure you've all guessed, I said YES! Here is how I transformed it from an ordinary (my kids favorite new word) box into a fabulous new playhouse.

Here's the box we started with. It's huge!

To start with I opened it up along the seam.

Next, I measured out windows on the two middle panels and cut them on three sides. My idea was to turn these flaps into awnings.

After cutting the windows, I laid the box flat on my dining room table and gave it two coats of white acrylic craft paint to hide the printing on the box.

The princesses just saw "Tangled" so they wanted to paint it the same color as Rapunzel's tower. I didn't have any purple tempera paint so I mixed a metallic blue and plain red. Here it is after two coats. The picture's not great so you really can't see that it didn't turn out quite the right shade.

  

That didn't matter. Once the purple was dry I mixed up a rosy shade with metallic red and white and gave it one coat over the purple. Again, the photo's not great but I finally had a color we could all agree on.

Once the "outside" paint was dry I painted the "inside" with two coats of chalkboard paint. I let that dry for a day or two and then primed it with the side of a piece of chalk. That way it can be a house with furniture or a grocery store or a cafe or whatever their imaginations come up with.

Next came the curtains. Queen Sallie sent me a box of fabric that she deemed too girlie for her house of boys. I couldn't be more pleased! There was plenty of fabric to choose from and Princess Little chose a white fabric with little bouquets of purple flowers. I also used some purple fabric left over from our quilt for the valance. To put it together I stapled the fabric to one side of a rectangle of cardboard that is slightly larger than the window.

Next, I cut a length of the white fabric a few inches longer than the window. I cut it in half and hemmed one side (I didn't have to cut off the selvage so I didn't have to hem that side) and the bottom of each panel. Then I stapled it to the cardboard adding little pleats as I went.

Then, I brought the purple fabric around and glued it (the staples went all the way through cardboard I used and I didn't want them to show). Then, I glued the sides too.

After letting the glue dry overnight I used my glue gun to attach them to the playhouse over the windows. I then used a piece of purple grosgrain ribbon to tie them back.

Now it's time to prop those windows up! To do this I cut five strips of cardboard. One of them is about four inches longer than the other four. The longest one went on the bottom and then I glued the other four on top of one another with the hot glue gun.

Using Mod Podge, I covered the middle with white paper. I thought about painting it to match the outside of the house but I decided I liked the white accent. I also didn't think I could get the paint exactly the same since I did so much mixing.

See those blue dots? They are a fabulous little product I found (review post to follow) to attach the supports to the window.

I think the windows and their awnings turned out great!

The final, for now, detail was some flowers growing around the outside of the house. Queen Sallie convinced King Daddy to get me a Silhouette for my birthday (way to go Queen Sallie!) I used it to cut these flowers.

I cut each layer out of a different pattered/solid paper in smaller and smaller sizes. Then, I glued them together in the center of each layer. Next, I glued a button to the center of the top layer. Once it was all dry I folded each petal up to give it depth. Lastly, I used a glue gun to glue them to the box.

I hope this has inspired you to turn "trash" into something beautiful for your kids!