Sunday, April 19, 2009

The Pumpkin Project (Part 1)

Pixielated Builders has always specialized in Unique homes for Unique pixies. This next project is about as "UNIQUE" as it gets.

Pixielated Builders has a new client, she has requested that we build her a house made from a pumpkin. I've explained that pumpkins are not available at this time of year, and we will have a better chance of finding a pumpkin in the fall. She is not willing to wait that long, and has agreed to find the pumpkin needed. I wish our motto was "Normal houses for normal Pixies'.

I was surprised, but Silvana found a pumpkin. That's her perched on top of the"Great Pumpkin". She sometimes fills in for the Tooth Fairy, which explains her wings.



So we have the pumpkin, but we had additional problems. Try going to your city/county offices and try to get a building permit to make a residence out of a pumpkin. Talk about "orange" tape. There are no building regulations covering this type of structure in any records for this county.

I finally had a "bright idea". You may remember the nursery rhyme:
Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater,
Had a wife and couldn't keep her;
He put her in a pumpkin shell,
And there he kept her very well.

By doing a google search, I located Mr. Pumpkin Eater. He graciously provided me with the original drawings for his wife's house. It took awhile for the Fae city counsel to review and finally approved his plans, as an acceptable structure. Then we had to resubmit plans with the modifications that fit Silvana's ideas of her perfect home. that took more time, but we are now able to move forward with the "Pumpkin Project".




We marked off a rather large section in the rear wall as we will be cutting it out .





As you'll notice, we have the heavy equipment standing by. The crane for lifting the section and the front loader and truck to help with the disposal of the innards.



Taelyn has had some experience with pumpkins (as this file photo shows) and indicated that they can be very messy.

For a Tooth Fairy stand-in, Silvana is pretty sneaky. She could have let me know that this was a Styrofoam pumpkin and had no innards.




Maybe things are turning around and this project won't be as bad as I had thought.

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