Building a playhouse, part two.

After starting on Easter Sunday, earlier this summer we finished building the kids' playhouse. We had to finish the siding and trim, install the flooring, paint, build the door and windows, and install the roofing. It turned out pretty nice. For a playhouse, that is. Sefton picked out the house numbers.

Rewinding a bit, first there was the siding. We didn't want to actually buy siding. It's a playhouse after all. Truth be told, though, we were using this opportunity to test out some ideas we have for 'contemporizing' our house: board and batten siding and exterior trim painted white, black windows, cedar soffits, and bold, black fascia. 

So we faked pretty much all of it, starting with the board and batten siding. I took a piece of 1/4" plywood and ripped it down to 1-1/2" wide strips. Then just tacked it to the plywood after first priming.

I had also trimmed out all the windows and the doorway before tacking on the remaining batten scraps to the underside of the porch overhang.

Board and batten siding: check.

Then we painted everything white. Well, not exactly white. Silver Dust, it's called (Valspar 7004-19). Someone helped. Worth noting: exterior primer doesn't easily come off skin. Little turd.

Next up was to hang the cedar in the soffits. That took some intentionality with where I spaced the blocks attaching the outermost rafter and fascia to the inside rafter. Also, I had to rip down the 5' cedar fencing material I used (it's cheap!) to fit the two soffits on the sides. If I had been smart I would have made the blocks the same width as the cedar. Oh well.

Next: build a door. 

We had leftover plywood, so rather than try to source a cheap door we still liked, I just built one from the scraps. I used 1x2 furring strips and crappy plywood. Again, it's a playhouse.

I ended up using my trusty pocket hole jig and a new-for-the-project door knob jig. For mortising the hinges, I used a multi tool and good ol' fashioned chisel. The lockset (Kwikset Halifax) was leftover from when we went around the house and replaced all the round knobs a year or so ago.

Boom.

Okay, time for flooring. We found the cheapest flooring we could (99¢ a square foot!) and quickly laid it down. The kids helped. Kind of.

I built a custom kicker block from a piece of scrap 2x4. Using the table saw, I ripped a lip that was the same height as the lip on the flooring. That way, I could shove it up against the flooring and pound it tight with a hammer against the previous row. It worked like a charm.

Besides painting the door and the fascia (plus foundation) black, we had the roofing to install. Mentioning this to our neighbor John, he shared that he had a shed with galvanized metal roofing he was going to be tearing down. We were welcome to tear off the roofing panels. So I did. Free roofing is too much to pass up.

Then I had to build the six windows. Again, we were going for cheap. I used more 1x2" furring strips and plexiglass. Okay, plexi isn't cheap. In fact, it's stupid expensive for what it seems it is. 

After taking the furring strips to the table saw to cut out the groove where the plexi would fit, it was just a matter of mitering all the corners, shoving in the plexi, and tacking it all together with my brad nailer.

I got lazy when I installed them and just used shims. Maybe next spring I'll find a way to hinge them so at least the four bigger ones open. For now, they're installed.

And with that, their little playhouse-slash-fort was finished. It was a fun project. We'll use the structure for storage once the kids get too old to play in it.

In the meantime, they love it. K's parents brought a wooden kitchen Scott had built when K and her siblings were kiddos. We hung some solar lights. I'll likely end up adding a solar-plus-battery combo to wire a couple of lights inside. We also have to deal with the porch floor, but we're waiting to get lucky finding some scrap Trex someone is tossing. For now, we'll paint it before winter.