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Home › Articles › Fatherhood › Out of the Box

Out of the Box

Building a Unique Homemade Toy Chest

By Mark Stackpole

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The toys may change, but the clutter remains the same. From Lincoln Logs to Legos, kids like to have their playthings at their beck and call. Parents, on the other hand, want to be able to walk from the couch to the refrigerator without being upended by a Hot Wheels car. And let's face it – sometimes it is just good for the soul to have a floor free of toys.

A toy box is the most obvious solution, but often they, too, look like a molded plastic toy, which may look fine in a child's room but not next to the dining room table. So how about grabbing some wood, breaking out the hammer and saw and building one yourself?

You Can Do It
Gail O'Rourke, the owner and operator of Plymouth, Mass.-based Hometown Woodworking and an expert woodworker, was not always savvy at woodworking. But when she found herself in a financial crunch, she decided to give it a shot. "By the time the remodel of our house was done, there was no money left to furnish it," says O'Rourke. "I looked at some of the things I wanted and said to myself, 'I can do that,' and I went for it."

Given her experience, O'Rourke believes constructing a toy box can be a fairly straightforward project, even for a beginner. "You can build it with a handsaw," she says. "You can buy precut wood and make it with just a hammer and some nails. There is no right way to build a toy box as long as it is made in such a way that it is going to survive when a 2-year-old crashes a toy car into it."

Just because a project is simple doesn't mean that quality has to be sacrificed. "Even if you are just using the old 'glue and screw' technique, it doesn't mean that it's not a nice piece," says O'Rourke.

As the mother of three, O'Rourke also knows how important it can be to find a job for kids who want to help. She suggests parents let the young ones make some design suggestions and even assist in the construction. With some safety glasses and very careful supervision, a child can hammer on the nails that a parent has already put into the boards. "A family can talk about the experience they had making it and even what they might work on next time," says O'Rourke. "There is a definite pride of ownership for the kids."

Tools of the Trade

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