Building A Cardboard Fort

Getting ahold of appliance boxes to build a cardboard fort can be tricky - so tricky that the inventor of Mr. McGroovy's Box Rivets, an ingenious fastener designed for cardboard fort-building, sees fit to maintain a tip sheet for customers that explains how to track them down. When we read the saga on Thingamababy about AJ's search for appliance boxes, we crossed our fingers. So we were pleasantly surprised when we discovered that a locally-owned appliance store in our town actually kept leftover appliance boxes in their warehouse - to sell them, for a flat $2 apiece. If we hadn't been prepared for the worst, this might have seemed like opportunism; as it was, we were downright grateful for the service. We bought two stove boxes and two refrigerator boxes.

Mr. McGroovy (sorry, don't know his real name) had sent us a box of his box rivets to try out, as well as a handy rivet remover - a combo that sells for $9 on his website - and with my parents visiting from out of town, we thought it would be fun to try them out.

All we added to the kit was a utility knife to partially break down the boxes, and, as it turned out, some packing tape for double-thick joints and seams. Mr. McGroovy's website features several plans for forts, and we decided to build one of the smaller ones, a train, consisting of an engine and a passenger car, and the engine had a great rounded design that involved a lot of cutting.

With Mr. McGroovy's rivets, the task was, for the most part, a snap. Where the boxes had double layers of cardboard for additional support, McGroovy's standard rivets were at a loss to assist - the cardboard was just too thick for the rivets to get a good grip, and peeling back one of the cardboard layers and embedding the rivet within a cardboard sandwich was just too much work. But the rivets were a major saver of time and effort, and produced a cleaner design than wads of tape everywhere. (Update: The product's developer wrote in to let us know about longer rivets they're currently offering to write-in customers and will soon be selling on their site. Read our update post to find out more.) We used the tip of the knife to gouge our way through the box wall when the rivet itself couldn't punch a sufficient hole, but we weren't reading instructions very carefully; the task would have been made much easier using one of Mr. McGroovy's recommended drilling methods, illustrated at left.

What we didn't appreciate from the outset was that even a "small" fort built out of three appliance boxes is quite large when it is in your living room. Above is a photo of us putting a few finishing touches on the train after we taken the engine outside and I had wasted most of a can of black spray paint trying to paint the engine. My dad designed a smokestack for the front, with built-in tabs we inserted through slots we cut in the engine. We skipped the cowcatcher, but fantasized about a tap light or heavy-duty flashlight that could serve as a headlight.

My parents left. We got very busy. I moved the engine out to our screen porch, where it sat in two pieces, but the passenger car stayed in our living room, shoved up against a wall. Z continued to play happily in it, using it as a play house. Then it started to rain, every day for almost a week. Tempera paint stayed on our shopping list as this store and that didn't have what we were looking for. After awhile, we started actually taking for granted that our living room layout felt more like a crowded estate sale, and that I had to climb over our coffee table to pour us a glass of wine.

Finally, the bad weather broke, and I took the engine, a bit worse for wear, out into the driveway, along with the passenger car which, it turned out, did not quite fit through the doorway, and had to be mercilessly scrunched in order to choo-choo out of there. But one of the great joys of toddlers is they truly see the forest for the trees, sometimes not actually seeing the trees at all. Z joyfully assisted us in painting the engine and passenger car a variety of vibrant colors one warm evening last weekend. Painting that train was probably the most fun she had during the whole project, because it was the one step an almost-three-year-old could fully participate in. A sense of great relief and celebration washed over all of us - for Jenni and I it was surprising how roomy our living room felt when we finally got the space back.

I won't bother apologizing for the poor quality of our demo video, or for its highly irrelevant soundtrack. It's just a little clip to show you how the rivets work. As you'll note from the video, it is possible, but not quite as convenient, to remove the rivets with a claw hammer instead of the custom rivet remover. The inconvenience would only save you $2, but it's nice to know that if you lost your specialized removal tool you could still use and re-use your rivets.

Below, the finished train.

The rivets held the thing together.

I brought out three chairs for Z to use as seating for passengers. According to her, this is how seats are arranged on a train: in a row facing the windows, so that the passengers can look out.

Inspecting the passengers.

Conductor, there's been an accident!

Examining the patient.

Dora, always a bit too adventurous for her own good, suffers a worrisome fall. Luckily, a doctor is on hand...

to check her eyes...

... and the roof of her mouth.

For the effort, we'd recommend you save an activity like this for the day before a party or major playdate, to get the most joy units for your efforts. Since we lack a large garage area to store a fort in progress or protect it from the weather, we'll probably make our next cardboard fort for a party. But when we do, there's no question we'll be using our Mr. McGroovy rivets.

You can buy these great rivets and see all of Mr. McGroovy's great cardboard fort plans on the Mr. McGroovy website.

Update: We're also giving away three boxes of McGroovy's rivets with rivet removal tools this week. Visit ZRecs tomorrow or subscribe to our RSS feed or via email to find out how to win!