Cooper came to me last week and said
“Mom, can you take me to the hardware store I want to build a box”?
“Sure!” I said..”Lets do it!”
…. few hours and $50 bucks later ….(he swears he will pay me back)!”
we started with a 12″ W x 1″ D x 8′ L PINE BOARD
HARDWARE NEEDED:
2 hinges
3 locks (he is calling it his “safe”
Paint and paint bushes (I had these)
Screws
TOOLS NEEDED:
Drill/Electric Screwdriver
JIGSAW
1. My goal was for all of the CUTS to be horizontal on the board. This meant that one side of each piece would need measure 12″. For those of you that are carpenters, this will seem completely basic, but for us…this was an opportunity to USE MATH and calculate the correct meausurements. To begin with, while the board is 12″ x 1″ x 8…ACTUALLY it is 11 14/16 3/4″ and 8′ L.
our top and bottom therefore needed to total 11 7/8 + 1 1/2 (two times each D of 3/4) = 13.375
when I tell you that the above equation took us an hour and a bunch of drawings, some arguing and then finally I used graph paper to visualize it…I am not exagerrating! It was crazy.
BUT WE GOT IT RIGHT!!! maybe a tad crooked…but right!!!!
….we glued each piece with Elmers Wood Glue before putting evenly spaced screws in each side. We had to be careful to get in the dead center of each piece as the wood kept wanting to split.
THEN CAME THE FUN PART:
PAINTING AND PUTTING ON ALL THE HINGES, LOCKS AND HANDLES!
DONE!!!!
I AM SO PROUND OF MY BUDDY. I was really dreading this project…usually what happens is that they get ALLLL jazzed up and when they see how much WORK it actually entails..the whining and laying down on the floor commences…but Cooper hung in there with me, worked until the very last screw was installed and NOW he has one DARN NICE
SAFE BOX
and best of all…he and I had fun doing it!!!!
You are totally one of those “cool moms”, aren’t you?!
What a fun project to do together! I don’t think my mom would have had the patience for that when I was a kid. haha! I always loved boxes growing up (in fact, I still do). There’s something so nice about having all of your secrets in neatly arranged, lidded lockaways. 🙂
We have boxes like that too! My son is 21 now but when he was your son’s age he would work and work out in the garage to make things. He made huge messes but we just couldn’t fuss because he had fun and was creative. He still is creative and considers nothing outside his limits. 🙂
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KID PROJECT: BUILDING A BOX WITH COOPER