Rolling Ark Puppet Theater

Submitted to Community Chat

While I was working on the dividers for the church, someone mentioned it would be nice if they were low enough to be able to do puppets over the top; but I told them it would actually be fairly high because of the additional base and wheels.  But it did give me an idea for an extra project.  My son-in-law was joking around and said we should build an ark, so I thought why not build an ark as a puppet theater and surprise them with it.

The space that they needed to store it was only a little over 3 ft, but I needed to have it wider for the boat shape to look proportional, so I decided to make separate end panels that could fold back out of the way when it had to fit it into the space.  I wanted to include shelves at the back to store the puppets.

I started with the shelves, then cut an opening into the piece of plywood that was attached to the front.  I found some tongue and groove siding at Home Depot that was really inexpensive and cut it into pieces for the bottom front and the two sides.  The side pieces were attached with some hinges that I had.  I framed the window and added a shelf piece at the bottom.  The roof piece was cut from a piece of leftover 1x10 and then I attached the shingles cut from 2 inch bender board (I didn't have time to rip boards and the bender board is only .98 cents for an 8 foot piece).  The other smaller siding pieces for the top were also cut from the bender board.  I finished with wheels on the bottom.

I thought I was done; but then got to thinking, what if one of the kids asked about the door for the animals to get on the ark (you know kids) - I had just enough siding (and I found a 1x2 in my scraps) to add a door/ramp.   We also decided if we took down the curtain, it could be used as a booth for the different events at the church (or the school, which is on the same premises).