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This video is all about helping you understand how to do the main assembly
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of the house. So that's joining the bottom and the sides and the front and
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the back. So here we have the bottom and these strips, these solid wood strips are
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already applied around the perimeter of the bottom on the underside face in
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order to give it more strength at the bottom where it needs it. So your first
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job is to take this bottom piece and to essentially rotate it on its edge like
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this. So imagine the floor of your work area is here and the bottom is standing
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straight up. Now if you can get a helper to hold that for you then that's great
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If not you can apply a fairly large clamp right here. A quick grip
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clamp works very well. Gripped right at the bottom edge it forms a kind of a
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foot and it will allow that bottom piece to stand upright. So your
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first job is to fasten one side to this edge of the bottom and then on the
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other side of the house the same thing. So you should use glue, plenty of
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weatherproof glue along here and some number 10 by one and a quarter inch deck
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screws. So when you're done you will have a kind of U-shaped arrangement with
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the house resting on its back. You'll have this side piece, you'll have this
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bottom piece and then over on the other side you'll have another side piece just
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like this one. So if you look at the materials list you'll see that this
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distance of the bottom is 46 and 3 quarters inches and that's also the
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width of the sides from here to here. Now your job is to take the front piece, put
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it on top of the two sides as the house sits on its back with more glue and some
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more screws driven into the edge of the side piece. So you'll want to use a
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pencil to mark a certain distance to mark half of the thickness of the
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plywood here along this front piece to guide you so you don't miss hitting the
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edge of the side pieces with your screws. And then you flip the house over just
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like this so that the front of the house is now on your floor and the back is
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open. You just repeat the process, put the back piece in place, glue and screws
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to hold it in position and you'll find when you do this that the square
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corners and the accurate shape of the front and back will true up the sides
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and the bottom. So at that stage before the front of the back go on the sides
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can be kind of floppy. They're only fastened at one end actually, you know, of
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course down at the floor at the bottom. But adding the other pieces, the front
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and the back, is going to true that up because those pieces will be square cut
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as they are from standard sheets of plywood and they'll make things quite a
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bit stronger. Once you get all of these pieces in place you're going to have a
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solid structure and essentially all that remains to do now is to make it
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pretty, to add the door and to make the roof. So you're really just
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building details onto this basic box which is now really your main
