When employees of one particular company returned back to work after the holiday break, they had one simple & brief email from their boss: “do something to decorate our desks to help the team get over the January blues.” But being part of the company’s creative team, the workers took this small request and made it their personal mission. Their goal was to create a giant cardboard castle for all the office to behold.
I’ll let Imgur user ThomMilson take it over from here…
Before we could plan anything we needed to know if we could get the materials without anyone knowing. We wanted to make sure that everything could be recycled afterwards, so we used all of the waste cardboard we could find from around the office and then hid it in a storeroom. Luckily we managed to not look too suspicious!
After we sourced our materials, we drew up some simple blueprints so we had a good idea of how to join everything together. This also gave us a good indication of how big the castle was actually going be.
After we’d determined the size of the castle, we decided on the details. The first thing we decided on was the bricks. Without bricks the walls would have looked flat (and too much like cardboard) so we decided that bricks were an absolute must. We swiftly calculated the amount of bricks we would need: roughly 500. Then we decided on flags, because every castle has to fly a flag!
First we started on the walls. Each wall was created using two panels, both 2m x 1m in length. These panels were than attached in an overlapping manner to add strength to the walls.
We attached these panels using glue guns. You’ll be surprised how quickly you get through the glue sticks. In total, we used around 80.
When we started making the bricks, we realized we needed a production line, otherwise we weren’t going to finish on time. Two of the team cut and prepared the brick panels, while the other two stuck them on the walls. In the end we made over 480 bricks.
One of the hardest tasks, was working out how we would make the towers stand up, as they were over 3m high – cue an ingenious folding idea!
Once we had the bricks attached, we could start to stand everything up.
Some of the walls needed a little help until we could get them secured properly.
Then, as dawn began to break, we added the drawbridge. Now, all we had left was the flags.
The Final Castle
The drawbridge up.
In the end, construction took around seven hours, with planning and prep taking a further two hours. We were tired but it was all worth it when we saw our colleagues’ faces the following morning.
Lastly, here we are at work, in our lovely new creative space.
Inside the belly of the beast.
Office Morale skyrocketed.
Mission accomplished!
Via Imgur
