Cardboard box car house

I have fond memories from primary school of making little rooms inside shoe boxes. I can't remember the context, but I loved decorating the inside of a box with pictures cut from magazines, adding in little pieces of furniture and so on. I'm looking forward to doing this someday with Harry and Mia, but I think that they are a bit young for this at the moment.

I have however noticed that Harry has been playing a lot lately with a Mack truck from Cars which we were lucky enough to have handed down to us recently. It's like a little house for Lightning McQueen, with a bed, sink, little rollers and brushes and so on. So when a cardboard box arrived in our house this week I thought that I would turn it into a house for his cars.



Cardboard box car house. The green arrows were Christmas trees
from a Christmas craft pack!

I made a covered section at one end, marked out to form a car park on the top. There is an internal ramp, and a larger ramp up the outside, which folds over for storage. There is a small door at the front and the back, and Harry has stuck pictures of cars from magazines to the outside.

That would probably have been enough, but I couldn't stop there. I used two smaller boxes to make a car wash and drying area in the corner, then I added some pictures for the walls, a mirror from tin foil, a bed and some cushions. In the middle is a little table which they can drive up to, and the cars also have a hot tub and rug.

Inside the car house. Note the table with bowl and food picture
cut from a magazine, the bubblewrap/food container lid
hot tub and rug made from an old sock.

This was a fun project because Harry was able to get involved with the sticking and suggesting things that he might like to add in. I think that he was a little bemused though ("cars don't need chairs, they don't have bottoms!") but he indulged me, and it has had a lot of play!