So I am building them one. Out of salvaged wood. There is a wonderful 'Free Store' in the city where we live. I drive about 20 minutes through beautiful farm country and there are all manner of things, set out for free. Lots of furniture. Lots of bed frames and assorted things people no longer want. I love the free store. Because I love refinishing furniture, and painting things.
So I began by measuring a square on the ground in my garden. A square that looked big enough for a small fort. Then I called my Dad, and asked, about the foundation. Because if it's on the ground the wood will rot, but I am not about to go laying a concrete foundation in the garden of my rented townhouse, for a fort.
So we decided the best thing to do was dig a few inches down and cover the ground with concrete cinder blocks, and then lay the floor on that. Which worked perfectly.
When I told my Dad I was going to build a fort for my kids he said and I quote "You can't do that, you don't know what you're getting yourself into." And he's right, It's a huge job, it's been hard work, sawing and screwing in and measuring and figuring things out, and getting them wrong and taking them apart again.
But it has also been awesome. My arms are getting really strong, from carrying around a toddler and from using the screwdriver and hauling huge chunks of wood around.
To make things more challenging I decided I was only going to use hand tools. It is much safer with a toddler bambling around the yard to be using a little hand held screwdriver rather than a giant noisy drill. And there's no silly cords lying around, and a hand held saw you can just stop sawing if you want to avoid sawing something by just stopping moving your arm, but an electric saw keeps going a while.
So now, it has been two weeks, and I have almost three walls up, and it's really cool looking.
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