Ok not a real house but...so here's the story behind it and some pictures.
The set up
My wife is the Special Events Coordinator for the MOPS group at our church. Mops stands for Mothers of Preschoolers, and our church has the largest MOPS group in the world. Total membership is 115K worlwide with ours at over 300 moms and 600 kids. Anyway one of the events she corodinated was the Holiday Parade in Laguna Niguel, she did not handle the whole parade, but just our entry. I was asked to build a float for the kids or moms to pull down the street. We decided on building the house seen in the pics.
The Build
I procrastinated a month or so, and by the time I was ready to go, I found out my budget was $100, not much. So I drew the design out on graph paper, and it looked proportionate enough so off to home depot. I picked up some 2x2's and 2 sheets of really thin plywood, some right angle brackets to connect the frame, some screws and some big rubber casters. I had the guys at home depot cut the plywood for me, and since I had the graph paper drawing I just followed my Blueprint and had it worked out to fit all the pieces in only 2 sheets. When I got to the checkout line I was a bout $60 over budget due to the casters I had picked up, so I took those off and got out of HD for $98 with no way to roll the dang thing, but I had ideas. I got home and couldn't find my tape measure. I borrowed a hand saw and a mitre box to make the cuts in the 2x2s. With out a tapemeasure I just set the framework on the cut plywoood and marked the lengths from there. I also don't have any power tools, so a phillips head screwdriver and 35 screws later I had the framework built (no pilot holes) . I do have a staple gun so the panels went on easily. With no more money in the budget for paint or wheels, I got on the horn looking for donations, we are a non-profit church organization, so it is a write off too donate. No luck there. I asked freindly neighbor what she had and all she had were quarts of mint greens and tans they had used to test colors before a remodel. We took those to Home depot and they tinted them for us. He said no gaurantee on color, I said Blue is blue and add enough blue to mint green and it will be blue, Right? Thank you Home Depot for the help they were great. So a little paint job and some borrowing from our own X-mas decorations, we cut out some gift bags for the ornaments on the back and the tree in the window. Now running out of time to find some way to roll this thing, I dismantled my two longboards and used the wheels. Worked pretty good too. Now a couple of extension cords for ropes to pull the thing and I was done. I won't bore you further with the nightmare of getting this thing to the parade route, and the fact that I got Shanghai'd into pulling it on the 2 mile parade route. Needless to say I celebrated my sucess, with a great smoke.
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The set up
My wife is the Special Events Coordinator for the MOPS group at our church. Mops stands for Mothers of Preschoolers, and our church has the largest MOPS group in the world. Total membership is 115K worlwide with ours at over 300 moms and 600 kids. Anyway one of the events she corodinated was the Holiday Parade in Laguna Niguel, she did not handle the whole parade, but just our entry. I was asked to build a float for the kids or moms to pull down the street. We decided on building the house seen in the pics.
The Build
I procrastinated a month or so, and by the time I was ready to go, I found out my budget was $100, not much. So I drew the design out on graph paper, and it looked proportionate enough so off to home depot. I picked up some 2x2's and 2 sheets of really thin plywood, some right angle brackets to connect the frame, some screws and some big rubber casters. I had the guys at home depot cut the plywood for me, and since I had the graph paper drawing I just followed my Blueprint and had it worked out to fit all the pieces in only 2 sheets. When I got to the checkout line I was a bout $60 over budget due to the casters I had picked up, so I took those off and got out of HD for $98 with no way to roll the dang thing, but I had ideas. I got home and couldn't find my tape measure. I borrowed a hand saw and a mitre box to make the cuts in the 2x2s. With out a tapemeasure I just set the framework on the cut plywoood and marked the lengths from there. I also don't have any power tools, so a phillips head screwdriver and 35 screws later I had the framework built (no pilot holes) . I do have a staple gun so the panels went on easily. With no more money in the budget for paint or wheels, I got on the horn looking for donations, we are a non-profit church organization, so it is a write off too donate. No luck there. I asked freindly neighbor what she had and all she had were quarts of mint greens and tans they had used to test colors before a remodel. We took those to Home depot and they tinted them for us. He said no gaurantee on color, I said Blue is blue and add enough blue to mint green and it will be blue, Right? Thank you Home Depot for the help they were great. So a little paint job and some borrowing from our own X-mas decorations, we cut out some gift bags for the ornaments on the back and the tree in the window. Now running out of time to find some way to roll this thing, I dismantled my two longboards and used the wheels. Worked pretty good too. Now a couple of extension cords for ropes to pull the thing and I was done. I won't bore you further with the nightmare of getting this thing to the parade route, and the fact that I got Shanghai'd into pulling it on the 2 mile parade route. Needless to say I celebrated my sucess, with a great smoke.
