When Calgary resident Gord Relph booked a room at Winnipeg’s Fairmont Hotel, there was an option to provide special instructions.

“So I wrote down, ‘Pre-made pillow fort, and a vanilla Coke,’” he wrote.

Little did he know, staff at the downtown hotel were willing to rise to the occasion, providing about 10 pillows left stacked on his bed when he arrived with a note saying, “DYI (sic) fort.”

Relph was floored, then set to work. He chronicled his fort-building efforts in an online photo gallery that attracted nearly 300,000 hits in 18 hours.

“I consider myself a man of action, so when I saw the tools before me, I knew I had to make it happen,” he said Wednesday, of his decision to follow through and build a pillow fort. “As a kid, I used to make them all the time with my twin brother Cliff. We didn’t really have any toys growing up, so we had to make the best out of everything we had.”

He capped off the job with a “No Girls Allowed” sign designed to tickle his girlfriend, Katie.

“Based on how much coverage I have received, I consider this the best pillow fort of all time,” Relph said.

In addition fulfilling his pillow fort request, Relph was provided a coupon for not one but two vanilla Cokes, made by Fairmont chefs, plus plenty of candy to fuel his mission. That’s just part of the Fairmont experience, said Jacques Lavergne, the hotel’s sales and marketing director.

“As I’m sure you can imagine, with the clientele we have, we have all sorts of odds and ends-type requests. This is one of the more original ones,” Lavergne said.

PILLOW TALK WITH GORD RELPH:

How does it feel to have (so far) 180,000 people see your "No girls allowed!" sign?

I think it's pretty nice to have so many people look at the sign. It's getting up to 275,000 now, and this got a heck of a lot bigger than I thought it would. Originally I just posted it as a joke on Facebook, and then it snowballed from there. I never thought it would get this big. I originally put the sign on there so that my girlfriend Katie could see it. The response I have received has been mostly positive, though to the people being negative about it, I just want to say ... Just have fun with the little things.

Do you have any experience in building pillow forts? Would you say it was more a pillow fort or a blanket fort?

As a kid, I used to make them all the time with my twin brother Cliff. We didn't really have any toys growing up, so we had to make the best out of everything we had. I would say it's technically more of a blanket fort than a pillow fort. To me, all the forts are just pillow forts. I just used the tools that I had to make the best thing possible.

Have you made this kind of special request from a hotel before? Why or why not and why did you do it this trip?

I have never made special requests before. This time I saw the section, when I was booking it online, and I thought I'd try something crazy, but easy for them to do. I was expecting them to just laugh it off, but when I got there, I was quite surprised to see the equipment ready to go. I consider myself a man of action, so when I saw the tools before me, I knew I had to make it happen.

Why were you in Winnipeg and what did you think of it?

My job in Calgary sent me to Winnipeg to meet the core team. So far I like the city. It's a nice change from Calgary. It's interesting how much the city has come alive once the Jets came back here. It's great to see cross off seeing another province, especially the one at the centre of our country.

Relph blogs athttp://CandyBooze.com or http://TheGord.com.