Playhouse

So, I've wanted to build a playhouse since Paige was very very little.  I always wanted one when I was little, and I knew it would be a good way to get them outside more.  

We were renting for the first couple of years after Paige was born, but once we bought our own house I have no idea why we never got around to it.  I guess it's just such a big project I always thought of it as a "someday" kind of thing.  Suddenly I realized Paige is SEVEN YEARS OLD and only has a few more years of even wanting to play with a playhouse.  :(  So I talked Jess into it, and he was easy to convince, so I started planning.  I already knew a few things I was definitely going to have, like a fireplace.  I searched online a lot, to get ideas before I started making specific plans.  I found a few cute things I hadn't thought of.

We had removed the fig tree, and it left a nice space the right size for a playhouse.  I drew up some plans, ran them by Jess, and he started buying wood.  The kids knew we were going to be building one this spring sometime, but we wanted to actually do it earlier and surprise them.  Jess came home from work each day, changed clothes, and did a little bit of work outside before it got too dark.  He spent a couple of days making the deck/floor, and then a couple more days framing walls.  

Saturday rolled around, and we'd made plans with my dad and Trudi to take the kids after Paige's basketball game in the morning.  They would keep them all day, and overnight for a sleepover.  Our plan was to work on the house the whole time, without the kids knowing.  I, being insane, really truly believed we could finish the house with all that time, and present it to the kids the next morning.  Jess told me later he always knew that was NOT happening, but didn't want to burst my bubble, so he just went with it and did as much as possible.

Of course in my imagined day and a half of work, we were both out there working, with Reed happily watching from his swing or the stroller.  Ha!  In reality, Jess did 99.9% of the work, while I held/fed/played with Reed and watched, mostly from the porch swing.

 

Jess got the "siding" up on the back wall first, since it would be backed up against the block wall and impossible to do once it was up.

Grama came and held Reed for a while for me though, and Tyra came by and helped Jess get the walls up.

Instead of finishing the entire thing, at the end of the day we had the walls up, and some of the roof finished.   My plans were pretty detailed for all of it except the roof.  We had found instructions online, which we planned to use, but when the time came, we decided we didn't want to use them, because the guy was building a much smaller playhouse, and doing it his way wouldn't have made it as secure as we wanted for our bigger roof.  So we had to come up with something new.  Thankfully Karl and Barby came by to see how it was going, and ended up spending a good chunk of their Saturday AND Sunday morning helping get a roof built and up.

I liked Karl's use of two ladders here:

I even got to help(a LITTLE) thanks to Grammy.

Eventually I had to accept that we were going to be surprising the kids with four framed walls and a roof, instead of the finished product. 

 So, I told dad he could bring them home any time.  Apparently it was enough of a surprise to please them.

We spent the rest of Sunday out back, Jess still working, me still watching with Reed, and the kids playing.

Neely thought we needed drinks out there.

Over the next few weeks, we spent every free minute out there.  I had Jess get my fireplace started, so I could work on it whenever I had a few free minutes.  The kids had a suprising amount of fun in that thing while it was still far from finished.

The siding went up a little at a time.

We had to wait for the windows to ship before we could finish the walls.  We thought about making windows, but ended up finding really cute ones online for less than it would have cost for us to make inferior ones.  Ha.

Plus, they really open and have screens and everything.

Once they came, things started moving much more quickly.

I'm just including this next one for the pretty sunset.

 Jess did an awesome job, his first time working with shingles.

 

 

The kids had a lot of fun with the scrap wood and other junk we had laying around.

FINALLY we got to the point that I could start painting.  It turned out to be a good thing that we didn't suprise the kids with a finished playhouse-they got to help us with it a little bit, and feel like a part of it.

 

I had to fight the urge to be controlling about painting though.

We just used scrap wood for the fireplace, but I found a little package of fancy trim at Home Depot, that made it look pretty cute.

I managed to paint with Reed in my lap a little bit, and some of the time Paige helped me out.

 

Jess finally got to do the relaxing for a few days there.

It didn't last long though, pretty soon the inside of that thing started feeling like it would never end and I needed a break.  (That would be the sky light up there.  Tyra thought of that one, and I loved the idea.  Jess didn't love it as much.  We kept coming up with ideas for him to make happen.)

I had a few fun nights, painting the interior walls and fireplace, with my twinkle lights on, and Pandora set to Otis Redding.  :)

Finally we were doing the fun stuff, decorating and all that.  The kids say my fireplace really makes them feel warm.  :)

Jess made a door, complete with the sliding peephole I had ordered.  :)

That part was a hit.

We tried to make it a nice height, but Neely has to be held up to look through it for now.

 We painted, and repainted, the outside, added "shutters"..

...and will hopefully add window boxes for flowers soon too.

As soon as I decided it would have a fireplace, I knew it needed something above it, and after lots of thought I decided on a unicorn.  I spent one night on that little project.  Thankfully I got it on the first try.  A lot of times, when I first make a new pattern, it takes me 2 or 3 tries to get it right.

 

 

Then we moved out their kitchen, and their picnic table from Aunt TT...

 They had their first lunch out there this last weekend.

 We moved out more decorations and their baby cradle, and little fake pet bird.  :)

I've never loved the pattern on my lace curtains in our living room, so I chopped them up to make some for the playhouse.

 I even found some inexpensive twinkle lights that are battery operated, so they can have a little light in there in the evening.

 

Now we just have a few little paint touchups, some plans for little things to add, but it's mostly finished, and they seem to love it.  I know I love how it turned out, and I love my husband for making it happen just how I imagined it.  He's pretty awesome, and it was a lot of work, and I'm not the most patient person about waiting when I'm excited about something. 

I'm pretty sure the kids love it.  I'm a leeeeetle bit jealous to be honest.  We'll be camping out in there this summer for sure.

Now we just need to get some grass out there, so our yard is no longer a wasteland and we can actually have friends over for the kids to play.