# Building My Kids' Playhouse



## AndyPanko (Jan 16, 2012)

*Planning and Design*










I have two kids, both girls. They are four and a half and two and a half, and have since accumulated lots of stuff that takes up lots of space. My 8' x 10' shed outside is already full to capacity. A lot of its floor space is taken up by the kids' bikes/trikes, motorized Jeep, wagon, etc. I decided I need more storage outside. But instead of making it just another shed, I thought it would be more useful to make it primarily a playhouse that doubles as a shed for the kids' stuff. I figure the kids will be able to get good use out of a playhouse for the better part of the next 10 years. And the stuff they have will come and go (for example, the wagon and Jeep will probably be gone within a few years, and replaced by other outdoor toys).

Above is a Sketch-Up of what I plan on building. Yes that is my wife in the picture, and yes she doesn't have any facial features. She doesn't talk very much. I'm taking off from work the first week of April, and I think I can get it finished - or close to it - all during that week. It is a 6' x 9' footprint, and the peak of the roofline is 8'. The roof will have a 45 degree pitch. There will be a dutch door, approximately 4' high, on the front for the kids. On the side of the playhouse (the side that is NOT shown) I'm putting a larger adult-sized door so I can put things in and out of it. That door will be 3' wide by about 6' high.

So that's it for now. See you again in a few weeks when I start the project.

- Andy


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## dpop24 (May 14, 2011)

AndyPanko said:


> *Planning and Design*
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I love the design and the plan to take back your storage shed! My kids bikes and cars, etc. seem to multiply too and take up valuable storage space. I am going to build a playhouse in the next couple of months for my kids (also 4 and 2 years old). My design will be a 2 story structure so they get the sense of being up like a tree house, but the bottom story will be a "garage" for all their bikes, jeeps, and large outside toys. I'll be following your blog closely!


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## AndyPanko (Jan 16, 2012)

*Bought the Materials*

I plan on starting the playhouse this weekend. I got all the lumber delivered today. Since the weather isn't looking great for the next two days, I'll probably just do a lot of measuring, marking and cutting of wood. I'm also going to try to prep the site where the playhouse will go.

With the exception of paint, hinges, tar paper, LP smart trim and door latches, I have already purchased everything I need. I'm big on having lots of various size and finish fasteners on-hand. So I'm basically all set with screws and nails. Total bill thus far: already right around $1,000. It was about $400 from the lumber yard for the majority of the lumber. Another $300 for 8 sheets of LP Smartside panels (the lumber yard didn't carry that, but I really wanted it, and the shed in my yard used that stuff. I had to order it from Home Depot, but they charge $65 for delivery…jerks). About $200 for two bundles of 30 year dimensional roofing shingles, and a bundle of matching ridge caps (I bought the same shingles that we have on our house so the playhouse will roughly coordinate with our house. Our shed has the same shingles too), and about $90 for two pre-fab aluminum shed windows and a vented skylight. I figure I'm still looking at another $300 or so all said and done. Not cheap, but still cheaper than the pre-made kits of comparable design. And I know the construction will be rock solid.

Here's all the lumber dropped off in my driveway this afternoon. The LP panels are off to the left.










I had to bring it all into the garage/shop after I got home from work. All the treated stuff is in the back on top of the table saw. The non-treated stuff is up front.










Lumber list:
70 - 8' lengths of 2×4s
2 - 4×8 sheets of 3/4" T&G subfloor
3 - 4×8 sheets of 1/2" CDX roof sheathing
8 - 4×8 sheets of 3/8" LP Smartside panels
10 - 8' lengths of treated 2×4s
And about a dozen miscellaneous lengths of treated and non-treated 2x's and 4x's

Given the dimensions of the playhouse, I'm going to unfortunately have A LOT of big cut-offs. The walls are going to be 4 1/2' high, so there will be lots of 3 1/2' long cut-off 2×4 pieces. Same thing with the roof joists: they will have close to 3' long cut-offs. So I'm going to have lots of left over pieces of 2×4s after this project. I'll have to come up with something good to do with them.


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## Eagle1 (Jan 4, 2010)

AndyPanko said:


> *Bought the Materials*
> 
> I plan on starting the playhouse this weekend. I got all the lumber delivered today. Since the weather isn't looking great for the next two days, I'll probably just do a lot of measuring, marking and cutting of wood. I'm also going to try to prep the site where the playhouse will go.
> 
> ...


Great start. Can't wait till I will be able to see the final pics..


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## derosa (Aug 21, 2010)

AndyPanko said:


> *Bought the Materials*
> 
> I plan on starting the playhouse this weekend. I got all the lumber delivered today. Since the weather isn't looking great for the next two days, I'll probably just do a lot of measuring, marking and cutting of wood. I'm also going to try to prep the site where the playhouse will go.
> 
> ...


Hate to point this out but you should have spent the extra on 10' or 12' 2×4s and cut them all in half. Would have saved a lot overall. Instead of a 3.5' cutoff you have two wall joists and a 1' cut off from a 10fter.


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## AndyPanko (Jan 16, 2012)

*Site Preparation and Building the Floor*

The playhouse is going to go in an unused corner of our yard. There is currently a little tree and a couple of bushes in that corner. I'm going to keep the tree and one bush, but relocate the other bush. All of the landscaping in that corner was put in new a few years ago. But the bush that is getting transplanted never really did well there. So maybe it will be better off somewhere else anyway.










In an ideal world, I would have used poured concrete footings as the supports for the structure. But I'm not too concerned about minor shifting around. So I'm just going to have the whole structure rest on pavers, on grade. The first step was to take up all the grass where the structure will go. After the playhouse is all done, there will be planting beds around it, so I'm not making final lines around the grass. I'm just scraping up enough grass to have room to work.

After pulling up all the grass and digging out the bush, I put down heavy grade landscape fabric underneath where the final structure will be. Before putting down the fabric, I leveled the four spots where the pavers will rest. I stapled down the fabric and put down the pavers.










Next I built the floor frame. It is pressure treated 2×4s, resting on two pressure treated 4×4s acting as skids. I made sure the 4×4s were all leveled prior to building the frame on top of it. The main frame is 9' wide by 6' deep. There is a little 1' x 3' bumpout in the front where the kids' door will be. I just built a separate little box and screwed it onto the larger frame. Ideally, I would have actually ran joists all the way through the main box, and cantilevered them out to make the bump out. But structurally speaking, I'm confident that the way I did it is plenty sufficient. The plywood flooring will be continuous pieces that cover the larger box and the bumpout. That is some extra support. And the wall framing will all interconnect at the corners, providing more rigidity. And finally, the exterior sheathing will run down the walls and overlap the floor box/frame, thereby further tying everything together. It will be fine.

I made sure the frame was squared up (measuring diagonal corners and making sure the two measurements were identical), and then attached the floor joists to the 4×4s by toe-screwing the joists to the 4×4s.










Finally I screwed down the 3/4" tongue-and-groove subfloor and cut off all the overhang with a circular saw. Sure enough, the bumpout is plenty strong. I'm about 185 pounds, and when I stand on the bumpout, I don't see, feel or hear any sagging, creaking, etc. It will be fine for my two kids who both weigh probably less than a fifth of what I do.










It is supposed to rain all day tomorrow (Sunday), so I don't plan on making any more progress this weekend, hence the tarp in the picture above. After this upcoming week, I'm off from work for a week. I plan on hopefully finishing the whole project, or at least getting close to finishing it, during that week off. Until then.

- Andy


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## fernandoindia (May 5, 2010)

AndyPanko said:


> *Site Preparation and Building the Floor*
> 
> The playhouse is going to go in an unused corner of our yard. There is currently a little tree and a couple of bushes in that corner. I'm going to keep the tree and one bush, but relocate the other bush. All of the landscaping in that corner was put in new a few years ago. But the bush that is getting transplanted never really did well there. So maybe it will be better off somewhere else anyway.
> 
> ...


Great project Andy

I´ll be following close. It may inspire me


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## AndyPanko (Jan 16, 2012)

*Framing the Walls*

Fortunately, the weather forecasts were wrong for today - it ended up not raining and was actually quite nice. I took advantage of it by framing up all the walls for the playhouse. I did pretty basic methods for most of the walls - single bottom plate and 16" OC stud spacing (unless it made more sense to space otherwise in select areas).

When I was on the 2nd season of All American Handyman, I got eliminated on a challenge where we had to build a shed. One of the two reasons I got eliminated was because I didn't keep 16" OC spacing around the entire shed. I know studs are supposed to by 16", and I know WHY they are supposed to be 16". But I feel in certain circumstances, it is more logical to not stick to 16" for every cavity. Unfortunately Holmes and Scott didn't like my rationale, and held it against me. But I still feel I went about it the right way then, as I again did here with this project. Instead of belly-aching about it here, maybe I'll put up a separate post just about this topic. I'd love to hear everyone else's opinion on the matter.

Anyway, moving on. If you notice in the pictures below, I did only a single top plate. I could have easily done a double top plate, but I feel a single plate is fine in this case given the structural requirements of this relatively small structure.

One of the other unconventional things I did was the way I framed the wall where the larger (ie adult-sized) door will be. The height of the door needed to be higher than the 4 1/2' top plate height that the rest of the walls have. So I couldn't have a continuous top plate across that wall. I basically framed up the rough opening of the door, and then continued 4 1/2' high top plates flanking the door opening. My door is going to have a three-sided top (like the top half of a hexagon), instead of being square and straight across. I spent a lot of time planning out how the ridge beam will connect to the top of the door opening, and how the load will be carried down. I think I came up with a pretty good design here that will adequately support the load from the roof. I'll elaborate more on my next post - after the roof is all framed up. As for now, here's what I got:


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## FatherHooligan (Mar 27, 2008)

AndyPanko said:


> *Framing the Walls*
> 
> Fortunately, the weather forecasts were wrong for today - it ended up not raining and was actually quite nice. I took advantage of it by framing up all the walls for the playhouse. I did pretty basic methods for most of the walls - single bottom plate and 16" OC stud spacing (unless it made more sense to space otherwise in select areas).
> 
> ...


A nice looking structure.


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## fernandoindia (May 5, 2010)

AndyPanko said:


> *Framing the Walls*
> 
> Fortunately, the weather forecasts were wrong for today - it ended up not raining and was actually quite nice. I took advantage of it by framing up all the walls for the playhouse. I did pretty basic methods for most of the walls - single bottom plate and 16" OC stud spacing (unless it made more sense to space otherwise in select areas).
> 
> ...


Looking forward for the next weekend.


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## AndyPanko (Jan 16, 2012)

*Framed the Roof*

It took me a full day to get the roof framed…AND I had previously cut and marked the ridge beam and all of the full length rafters (ie those that didn't intersect with a valley rafter. I knew the roof would be hard (because of the gable and valleys), but I didn't think it would take a full day.

I have a book on framing, and it tells how to measure, mark and cut hip rafters and intersecting rafters. But after reading it twice, I decided it would be quicker and ultimately easier to just manually mark and cut everything with my own eyes, pencil and compass to scribe things. It seemed like the amount of trial and error it would take to get the proper technique would be more time that I was willing to spend. There weren't many compound cuts needed, given how small the structure is. So I thought I could just use brute force to get through the tricky parts. I have a 12" dual bevel miter saw, and it came in extremely handy. In the seven years I've owned this saw, I think this is only the second time I've used it to make compound cuts. Go figure.

I took me three tries to get the valley rafter cut properly. The hardest part was cutting the multi-dimensional bird's mouth. I know ideally the valley rafter should be two pieces of lumber sistered up, and it should be wider than 4" nominal. But again, considering the size of my structure, I thought a single 2×4 would suffice (all of my roof joists are 2×4s).

Here's my final roof framing. I'm assuming it is not exactly how a pro would have done it, but it'll do. After seeing how tricky the valleys and surrounding joists were, I now have a new found respect for professional framers. I can't imagine doing a huge house with a real elaborate multi-surface roof.



















Here's a close-up of how I framed the wall that will have the adult-sized door in it. I don't know if this is how a professional would have done it, but I think I schemed up a decent way to adequately support and carry down the load from the ridge beam. Any feedback from a pro on this would be greatly appreciated. I'm curious to see how else this wall could/should have been done.


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## AndyPanko (Jan 16, 2012)

*Sheathed and Trimmed Out*

I got up all the roof sheathing (1/2" CDX) and the exterior walls (3/8" LP SmartSide panels). The windows went in too. They are prefab shed windows (14" x 21" white aluminum). I custom made the doors. They are just 2×4 frames, pocket screwed together, and backed with the SmartSide plywood. For the kids' door, I made a two-part Dutch door. I also bored in a standard exterior lockset so they can easily open the door from the inside or outside. As for the trim, it is regular 2×4s around the doors, and composite exterior 1×4 trim boards around the corners of the walls, eaves, etc. Moving on to paint next.


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## AndyPanko (Jan 16, 2012)

*Got it Painted (in a very manly color)*

Our four year-old daughter picked the color. It definitely adds a pop of color to our yard, if nothing else… Final step is to paper and shingle the roof. It will be the first time I ever did roofing. Should be fun.


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## Riowood1000 (Jul 29, 2009)

AndyPanko said:


> *Got it Painted (in a very manly color)*
> 
> Our four year-old daughter picked the color. It definitely adds a pop of color to our yard, if nothing else… Final step is to paper and shingle the roof. It will be the first time I ever did roofing. Should be fun.


Are you planing on doing a close valley roof weave? or an open weave with metal valley flashing?


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## woodrookieII (Feb 9, 2011)

AndyPanko said:


> *Got it Painted (in a very manly color)*
> 
> Our four year-old daughter picked the color. It definitely adds a pop of color to our yard, if nothing else… Final step is to paper and shingle the roof. It will be the first time I ever did roofing. Should be fun.


That's a fine looking house!! The front door is really cool.

...rookieII


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## GrandpaLen (Mar 6, 2012)

AndyPanko said:


> *Got it Painted (in a very manly color)*
> 
> Our four year-old daughter picked the color. It definitely adds a pop of color to our yard, if nothing else… Final step is to paper and shingle the roof. It will be the first time I ever did roofing. Should be fun.


Very nicely done.

Play house for daughter, when she outgrows it, there's a utility door, and then back to the playhouse again, for the grandkids.

Couldn't help but fast forward to the grandkids, I have 8, and 2 great-grandkids.

Mothballs or a mothcake in the attic/rafters will keep the wasps and most of the creepy crawlers out.

Great design and forethought. - Len


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## AndyPanko (Jan 16, 2012)

AndyPanko said:


> *Got it Painted (in a very manly color)*
> 
> Our four year-old daughter picked the color. It definitely adds a pop of color to our yard, if nothing else… Final step is to paper and shingle the roof. It will be the first time I ever did roofing. Should be fun.


Andrew B: I finished the roof today. For the valleys, I did as recommended on the packaging of the shingles. They are Tamko Heritage 30y dimensional shingles. I'm not entirely sure what the method is called, but I know it is not an open weave, and there was not any metal flashing involved. I did some research online about valley methods, and oddly enough, the method recommended on the shingle packaging is not one of the few common methods I found online. So I don't know the specific name.


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## stan3443 (Mar 3, 2012)

AndyPanko said:


> *Got it Painted (in a very manly color)*
> 
> Our four year-old daughter picked the color. It definitely adds a pop of color to our yard, if nothing else… Final step is to paper and shingle the roof. It will be the first time I ever did roofing. Should be fun.


looks good she will get many happy memories


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## AndyPanko (Jan 16, 2012)

*Shingled the Roof - Now it's Done*

Took me a couple of hours to put up the 30 pound roofing paper, and about half a day to do the shingles. I had never done shingles before, so I wasn't sure how long it was going to take. I used just over three bundles of shingles, plus about a third of a bundle of ridge caps. I used Tamko's Heritage 30 year architectural shingles - color is Natural Timber. Our house and shed were re-roofed in 2008 with these same shingles, so now every structure in my yard is visually tied together by common shingles.

Roofing paper went up:



















Shingles done:




























This morning we started doing some of the landscaping around the playhouse. We got a good start, but are not completely done yet. My wife also wants to do some sort of finish for the walls inside the playhouse. At a minimum, she wants the whole inside painted white. We may do some sort of panels on the walls instead. I'm debating drywall, 3/8" plywood, melamine plywood, slat boards, etc. If/when I do get something up on the inside, I'll post pics at the time. But otherwise, I'm considering this blog done. It's been fun. Until the next project…

- Andy


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## cranbrook2 (May 28, 2006)

AndyPanko said:


> *Shingled the Roof - Now it's Done*
> 
> Took me a couple of hours to put up the 30 pound roofing paper, and about half a day to do the shingles. I had never done shingles before, so I wasn't sure how long it was going to take. I used just over three bundles of shingles, plus about a third of a bundle of ridge caps. I used Tamko's Heritage 30 year architectural shingles - color is Natural Timber. Our house and shed were re-roofed in 2008 with these same shingles, so now every structure in my yard is visually tied together by common shingles.
> 
> ...


Great looking shed Andy !!


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## Bearpie (Feb 19, 2010)

AndyPanko said:


> *Shingled the Roof - Now it's Done*
> 
> Took me a couple of hours to put up the 30 pound roofing paper, and about half a day to do the shingles. I had never done shingles before, so I wasn't sure how long it was going to take. I used just over three bundles of shingles, plus about a third of a bundle of ridge caps. I used Tamko's Heritage 30 year architectural shingles - color is Natural Timber. Our house and shed were re-roofed in 2008 with these same shingles, so now every structure in my yard is visually tied together by common shingles.
> 
> ...


Is this gonna be your "man cave" for the girls? Looks like a first class build all the way round.


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## oluf (Jan 29, 2010)

AndyPanko said:


> *Shingled the Roof - Now it's Done*
> 
> Took me a couple of hours to put up the 30 pound roofing paper, and about half a day to do the shingles. I had never done shingles before, so I wasn't sure how long it was going to take. I used just over three bundles of shingles, plus about a third of a bundle of ridge caps. I used Tamko's Heritage 30 year architectural shingles - color is Natural Timber. Our house and shed were re-roofed in 2008 with these same shingles, so now every structure in my yard is visually tied together by common shingles.
> 
> ...


Most important. Have you checked to make sure you are getting a strong router signal inside this new house? How will you keep the batterys charged in the lap tops out there? You should be very proud and the girls must think you are the greatest!!


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