Building Box

This one was a favorite project of mine. I wanted to make Baby J a building table, like the ones I had seen on Pinterest, with an Ikea end table and a flat lego platform glued on top. But I found a black wooden crate for free in a Craigslist curb alert, so decided to make it into a self-contained building box. The box was already black, but after I cleaned it up, I had to spray paint it too. I used our interior paint samples (3 bucks at Lowes, enough for a good sized project) for the sides. The most difficult part was finding a glue to use on the Lego pieces. Hot glue did NOT work. :)

Top of the box, looking down. I decided to only have one flat piece on the top, and make the other half into a parking lot. My first idea was to put flat pieces in the center and have a driving road around the edges, like I'd seen online. But I couldn't find a flat lego base piece that fit the box right - this one hangs over the edge, the small pieces were too small to make it work. So I put this large red one on the top because I realized that since we stored the blocks inside, he wouldn't be building with the box shut until he's old enough to take out some pieces for the purpose of doing a specific project.  I figured most of the play would take place with the box open, and I was right, at least so far. 

Inside. I glued a couple of flat pieces on the inside of the top of the box. I am intending to get more, but these are the only ones I had right now. Keeping the box open was a problem. It didn't fall open all the way, because of how it was built, but it also didn't stay flat. I didn't want to add pieces to make it stand up, and its solid wood, so making a hinge out of something for the inside seemed like an awful big project. I put some black weather stripping pieces on the side of the box where the lid meets it when its open. You can barely make them out in the picture. Two pieces about filled in the gap, so now the box stands open ALMOST at the right angle. Also, because its just foam, he can push on the top without ruining the entire box and the foam is easy to replace if I need to.