Home and Garden can suggest 35 uses for plastic milk jugs, but a young family in Cornwall, Prince Edward Island, Canada, has just come up with another way to recycle milk jugs that beats any we’ve seen so far!
With the aid of a hot glue gun, Scott and Andrea McNeill turned 840 plastic milk jugs into a unique playhouse for their 2-year-old daughter, Karina.
The playhouse, constructed between the posts that support a high deck off the family’s house, is built of milk jugs “bricks” and decorated with flowers made from the colourful caps. Karina calls it her “castle” and obviously just loves it.
I only wish that I had a picture to post here — from the news story on television this evening, it looks like the cutest little house!
[update! we’ve got pictures!]
To make each “brick” takes two empty plastic milk jugs. Leave the cap on one, to help give it strength. Cut the top off the second jug so that it will slide down over the narrower end of the first jug, and what you have is a remarkably sturdy plastic building block. The possibilities are unlimited!
Scott McNeill says he has no idea whether the little playhouse he built can survive the coming Atlantic Canadian winter but, “if it doesn’t,” he says, “we’ll just have to drink more milk and make another one!”
This is awesome! My handy hubby built a treehouse in a stand of pines in our back yard. The underside of the house has been begging me to fix it up. After seeing The Hobbit I declared to my gobsmacked family. “That’s it! I’m building a Hobbit House!”
Well, I got started, but was stumped about what to use to build the walls. I layed a ‘footer’ of sand bags made with plastic bags filled with sand. I want to use recycled materials since it’s cheap and makes me feel good. Hubby thought plastic bottles would degrade over time. Now I see they can last for years. I will need to take pics and post them somewhere when I am done. Gandalf will be pleased!
Brilliant idea, Russ – at least, it seems like a brilliant idea. :) And finally, a use for those foam packing peanuts. I don’t know if I’d want to live in a milk jug house, but you make me think this might be a great solution for the back wall of the ol’ greenhouse, which is barely standing up at present and likely won’t last more than another year or two. I’d love to hear if anyone’s tried a milk-jug construction project!
I actually was thinking about this as a possible way to insulate a wall in a ‘real’ building.. has anyone experimented with injecting expanding foam, packing peanuts, etc. into the milk carton bricks? It could increase the insulating ability of such structures quite a bit, but then again expanding foam costs $$ too.
Wow! I am SO totally impressed with this! This is utterly amazing! I hope you don’t mind if we make one too! I have put out an email to all our friends to help collect jugs for us, and we hope to make one at least as big as yours. Thank you for this incredible idea–we can’t afford to buy a premade playhouse, so this is FANTASTIC! Keeps the jugs out of the landfill, too! I am thinking of filling the bottom ones with sand to anchor them (we live in a sandy area, so this will be free, too) and putting it at the end of our driveway so the kids can use it while waiting for the bus to pick them up. Again, thank you, and beautiful job!
Hi There,
Just reading through the article again, and preparing for yet another winter storm (and we’ve had more than our fair share of snow/ice storms this winter…), and I thought I’d let you know that here we are in 2008 and the ‘Milk Castle’ is still standing, and providing lot’s of play time for Karina and her little friends in the warmer months!
Take Care
Hi
My name is Scott McNeill, I am the person that built my daughter Karin’s Milk Jug Castle. I happened to find this article you wrote on the internet.In the article you mention that you would like to have pictures of the castle. If you email me at [link] I will email some to you.
Thanks Scott