Build your own den part 2

And yes, the excitement continues...

Once the project has it planning permission (from me and daddy ebi) it was time to make a start. We headed off to the home centre and prayed that the crazy weather would hold off for the day. We started off getting the concrete blocks that the den would be built on... I think Ebi-kun is doing a good impression of heavy lifting here but not actually doing any!

Then it was off to get the timber for the base frame and floor boards. He had decided that the pre-treated wood was the best idea but we didn't know what the wood was treated with, so we asked the staff and they were clueless too. DH had to shoot off an email to the company website to find out whether it was safe or not. We got the OK 

The wood was too long for us to get it in the car so we had to have it cut to length...

Next was packing the wood into the car, we don't own a handy white van so it was a fun addition to the project!

And this was another reason we had to break the project up, we couldn't buy everything in one go anyway!

When we got back, Ebi-kun went round to collect his friend S-kun who had been roped into the building process too. Their first job was to prepare the area.

We also needed to take down a section of the fence, which we were planning to do anyway since the wood had rotted. It's the first time either of the boys had used the power tools so we made sure that either DH or myself kept a beady eye on them. They did a great job and shared the workload.

We had a comedy moment when they were trying to undo the big bolt that holds the pillar, neither DH or I realised that the boys hadn't used an adjustable spanner before and it wasn't until we noticed that they weren't making any progress that we realised that they were doing it all wrong!

They got there in the end, clear away the fence and prepared the ground. The area was measured and the concrete blocks put down and we ran into his first problem....

The blocks weren't stable if they were on top of the stones - the solution was to remove the stones.

Problem 2 - the ground is not flat so it wouldn't be a good foundation to build on.

The solution...find out next time!