Playhouse

This is something I built late last summer for my kids. It’s all pressure treated pine. I cut notches in all the boards so they go together like lincoln logs, or actually more like the little popsicle stick type playsets if you’ve ever seen those. The full-length pieces are about 7.5 feet long and then there are shorter pieces to use for the windows and door. I cut some slanted pieces for the roof and all the really short connector pieces to give the areas around the door and windows more stability. For the roof, I just rabbited one edge of each board on the router. The first roof piece at the bottom catches on a nub I left sticking up on the end of the slanted piece, then the rest of them just overlap, on up to the top board. In the last picture, you can see the two pieces I have going from front to back for stability so it doesn’t spread apart and allow the roof boards to fall. My two oldest kids are 10 and 8 years old and they can easily disassemble this and reassemble it in about an hour as long as I help with the roof. They can change the height of the windows, or leave them out altogether, or build it higher, as I made extra full-length pieces too. There are no fasteners, yet it held up easily to the lake effect snow here this winter even though two of my neighbor’s garage roofs both went down in the last couple years. It was a fun project, although a little repetitive.

-- Dale Manning, Carthage, NY