Is this something that the children will be playing in or on? Or is this a small garden ornament? What are the dimensions of this tower, height, wall thickness, diameter? If children are playing in or on this, it's not a good idea to experiment. Billie

You might consider a canvas roof in a teepee like form. But unless this thing is very, very sturdy, I'd not want children around it. Maybe even us an inexpensive "market umbrella"

If the structure is strong, you might use hypertufa as a veneer over what you've got that you don't like. Or papercrete which is a hypertufa-like material with shredded paper fiber instead of peat or perlite.

There is nothing quite like a fort or castle for kids so I hope you can figure this out .... post pictures!

LOL - I guess i could have been a little more specific. My bad - It was a little late when I was posting last night and I spaced the whole dimensions thing! After much over thinking last night I decided I just wasn't ready for experimenting with mixed media on the tower - it took too darn long to make it to mess it up now... BUT here's what I'm up to...

This is for a fairy garden that is about 8'x10'underneath a contorted willow tree. Besides some poking and prodding around the flowers and maybe some rearranging of the houses (or opening doors and peeking in windows to try to see the tiny inhabitants) the whole thing is just for "pretty" and sparking the already wild imaginations of my 4 small peaople (two fairy and unicorn and magic obsessed girls and 2 little boys, one of which has a thing for birds and dragons). This tower and the four other houses I am making are just ornaments to tuck among the plants and I plan on using the little battery operated "tealights" to place under them in the evenings so the girls see the windows glowing and think someone is living inside.... The houses will be about 10Lx10Wx12H and a big one thats 27Lx15Wx19H The tower is 12" in diameter and with the roof should be about 27" tall it has 3 little 3" round acrylic windows (that I lined with the fake stained glass stuff you can get at Home depot) and an arched wooden door that I mortared into the tower as I built it. I actually redid it - using small river rock and mortar and build it the old fashioned brick house way, layer by layer... Took FOREVER. The aquarium gravel just didn't seem to hold very well.

Now I'm stuck again. My husband is a carpenter so I'm going to have him show me how to frame a round roof - maybe hexagonal roof for ease of construction - with little pieces of craft wood. Then maybe use balsa wood (in the place of plywood used for our scale buildings) and see if I can figure out some way to make little shingles to attach to it. Lord knows I have enough roofing stuff from our new place to make the things water tight....

The hypertufa just seemed like a good way to be able to sculpt the odd angle and curve I originally envisioned for the roof but balsa wood bends a little so I think I can still do it...

But now that I'm looking at the hypertufa stuff I added a new house plan to the fairy village - a little dome house made to look like a rock - again with windows and an arched door - so now I need to figure out how to make a half sphere with a little wooden door and 2 small round windows placed into it...

As for forts - heh heh - my boys have ivy covered teepees each of their own in our woodland garden that they call their "park" because we designed it to look like their favorite park by the lake... They each have tackle boxes full of toys stored in their teepee huts and like to pretend to be army guys and shoot each other from between the ivy, I lose them for hours at a time in those things. Helps that we made sand pits in the bottom of them so they can dig around and play trucks and bury "dead" army guys. We have plans to build a real play house with a little loft for sleeping out and staring at the stars (yah for skylights!!!) but thats next summers project and up to my construction guy husband and his buddies.