The Woodworker & Woodturner – August 2019

TECHNICAL

http://www.getwoodworking.com August 2019 The Woodworker & Good Woodworking 49

Home truths

MODEST

DESIGNS

Edward Hopkins makes a bomb-proof Wendy house

T

he wheel turns. Imogen’s daughter Jaya

is at the age that Imogen was when she

used to play with a friend in a Wendy

house with curtains and a pretend

cooker. These were happy times, and Imogen

wants to recreate them for Jaya. Well maybe.

I think she wants to recreate them for herself,

and Jaya is the excuse. I think she’ll be down

there at the bottom of the garden with both girls,

making cakes from mud, and tea with cold water

in tiddly cups; taken with artificial slurping noises

and murmurs of delight. When I make a play house

for Jaya and Risha (which I’ve just agreed to do)

I’d better make it big enough for Imogen too.

I don’t remember the Wendy house, but it

makes me think of faded plastic and Snow White

kitsch. I don’t want anything to do with that. ‘Can

I go Kevin McCloud?’ I asked her. ‘Yes of course!’

she replied. When it came to it, the flat sedum

roof, the sliding glass panels and the snappy

The original [Wendy house] was built for Wendy Darling in J. M. Barrie’s play,

Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up. Wendy was shot by the Lost Boy

Tootles after arriving in Neverland, so Peter Pan and the Lost Boys built

a small house around her where she had fallen (Wikipedia)

detail evaded me. Unlike many a brave builder

on Grand Designs, I feel the need to keep a project

in perspective. It also needs to stay on budget.

What is my budget? Same as always: as little

as possible.

I spent the best part of £200 on the main

structure, and another £75 on the planed

pine floor, which I know is a bit extravagant.

My tiles were free. You’ll probably have to find

a reclamation yard because a builders’ merchants

will not sell such small quantities. It took a fair

number of screws and odd pieces of timber

already in stock, so approximately £300 in all

plus a week’s work.

What worries me about a sedum roof is not the

sedum. ‘More expensive than Axminster carpet’

I’m told, but not where I am. Sedum hitch-hiked

here in pots of sempervivum from Lidl, and has

now spread itself throughout the vicinity. It grows

without trying. I could just make a roof from a tray

lined with plastic or, much better, EPDM pond

liner, which never tears or rots, and load it down

with gravel. Mmm. What a weight to hang over

children at play! How sturdy must the walls be?

What about EPDM alone? Black. Ugh! This is

a play house, not a portal to the underworld.

Catching a train

Economy doesn’t mean scrimping. It mustn’t

mean flimsy. It means thinking about it for a bit

longer before sharpening a pencil. In came curved

corrugated iron, maybe the stuff they sell for

pig arcs (sorry girls) or Nissan huts (sorry girls),

but I don’t want to lash that to the roof rack and

paraglide up the M5, and I don’t want to have it

delivered in Bristol only assuming it would fit.

And assuming we could get it through the house.

What about flat corrugated iron? I like corrugated

iron, but not everyone does, and I don’t want to

turn their garden into a shanty town. Shingles?