Its my safe haven!! Not exactly bullet proof but most comforting to hide inside.
My Grandson loves it too, its his fort, his castle, his impenetrable refuge from the monsters under the bed!
It took a lot of manufacturing, or rather, concocting!! Especially with my blond brain. Almost a whole roll of fabric, heavy linen for the bottom, five sturdy hooks, velcro and aching shoulders. The trick was to get the fan inside so we could enjoy the breeze. It looked so simple in those fancy safari lodges.
But trust me, mine was an engineering feat of mammoth proportions!!
My Mosquito Net, My Princess Bed, My Haven from those annoying little biting, buzzing, blighters......
Fortunately our ceiling is Oregon Pine, so once I had formulated a plan in my mind, it took some designing!! The worst part was balancing the table on top of the bed and then balancing the stool on top of the table.!! Possibly a little precarious for a granny but it worked!!
That family bed of ours is immovable, its been there for forty years and with the weight of HeeHoo and I, several kids, two Great Danes, a Toy Pom, a Jack Russell and a melee of cats, it has found its final resting place deep in the carpet pile!!
Hence the necessity for the precarious man-made ladder!!
Sewing voluminous meters of netting was a mammoth task, the Little Black Cat insisted on nesting on every available space!! I used almost a bolt of netting fabric plus many meters of crisp white cotton as ballast for the bottom of the net. I had to factor in a great deal of durability as HeeHoo tends to fight with mosquito nets!! He is of the Ilk that considers nets 'sissy' and 'Claustrophobic' and 'stifling' !! Meanwhile in Bulawayo these days the mosquitoes are becoming legendary.
Our next door neighbours have an empty pool with a foot of stagnant water in the deep end and they resist all attempts by the City Council to spray with a pesticide, (possibly in case the Council discovers they have chickens and cockerels on the property!!) I contemplated the Old Trick of soaking a tea bag in paraffin and cajoling HeeHoo to throw it over the wall into the pool with his superb cricket bowling abilities, but he refused for some reason!!
Hence the need for the mosquito net and a selection of 'Executioner' Bug Zappers for sitting on the deck!!
Of course I did not give a thought to having to wash the darn thing occasionally, but I made some modifications and we have a divine eight foot square mosquito cage, which, when not in use, can drape artfully in elegant, majestic swathes!
Move over Meghan Markle!!