Fort D’oh

All I’m gonna use this bed for is sleeping, eating, and maybe building a little fort!

– Homer

In the interest of getting one thing completely done, we made a fort (UK: den) in the attic. We decided to make the attic area that contains the air conditioning handler into a dedicated fort area (using the non-AC part of the space, obviously). This space is accessed through a hatch in the back of our new closet. Here’s the pre-fort stage:

You know the Golden Goose? My dad has a Carpet Tile Goose.

Here’s the inspiration photo:

And here’s what we came up with:

I lined the plywood ceiling with reflective bubble-style insulation sheets because they (a) reflect the string lights and (b) prevent head bumps. To avoid other injuries, the Tick is standing guard.

I seeded the place with all sorts of random stuff from around the house–games, books, poster-frame-made-into-a-chalkboard, baseball mitts, a hard hat. And an art gallery.

In the middle, there’s a place to snuggle in and read or nap.

Right now, I’ve just got a blanket tacked up across the entrance, but eventually, I want to do some sort of hidden bookcase-door. I can’t justify taking enough time out to do that right now, but someday, it will be all Narnia up in here.

I’m perfectly aware that focusing on the fort steals time from finishing the larger project, but it was so gratifying when the nephews–13 and 6–both said, “OOOOOOOOH!” when they crawled in there. Sometimes, you just gotta do something on the house for funsies.