Playhouse Dreaming Continues!

We were able to spend a few hours on the playhouse today!  We decided to go with the SmartSide for the siding and we are happy with it! 

Johnny also framed the porch.  We are still discussing the porch floor.  If we would like to go with a deck look, we need to find pressure treated wood that is a 1x.  It doesn't seem like the lumberyards around here carry the size. 

Here are a couple of pictures of the siding and the framed porch.  We are still waiting on the windows.

The Ultimate Playhouse: Becoming a Reality!

Well, it is happening. The ultimate playhouse my husband wants to build for our girl is about to become a reality!

Johnny was first inspired by the playhouse pictures in a Sunset book called "Backyards for Kids" shown here:
It is actually the one that is featured on the front! 

The book doesn't have the exact plans; however, it gives a person a lot of pictures to reference.  Johnny is making this playhouse with the following deminsions:

Footprint size: 8' x 12'
Porch size:  4'x 8'
Indoor size: 8' x 8'
Wall height:  6'

I am not sure how tall the roof will be.  I think Johnny said something about 4' above the wall at the peak.

There is a loft over the porch.  The loft will be big enough for a single bed!

There are a lot of little decisions that needed to be made in regards to the structure before Johnny could even get started. 

For the siding he decided to purchase SmartSide Panel. SmartSide Paneling is affordable and good for small buildings and sheds.  It is quite thin, but should do the job well.  The reviews on the product were overall good.  Affordability definitely drives the reviews.  However, Johnny has not taken it out of the truck.  He just might reconsider and go with Ply-Bead siding, which is an all-wood siding.  The Ply-Bead would be a little bit stronger than the SmartSide Panel, which is made of engineered wood.

Next was the porch.  Although he has not purchased any materials for the porch, he is leaning to purchase pre-treated wood and make it like a deck.  I agree with him and think this would be the best material for a kid-space porch.

Another consideration was the height of the playhouse.  He did some research online and called someone who sells the playhouse kits and found that these playhouses have walls that stand about 5'.  Johnny wasn't sure if 5' was really going to cut it.  Ultimately he decided to go with 6' walls.  I am happy with this decision as well!  Johnny believes that the main reason one might have 5' walls is so that you can easily cut a 10' 2'x4' in half; therefore, you would be wasting less of the wood.

Alright.  So here is a picture of day one.  Johnny went to the store and purchased most of the building materials needed to build the house.  In the early afternoon he was stuck because the windows he ordered on Ebay had yet to arrive. 

Good start!  He got both walls up, now it is a waiting game until windows arrive.  We are going to have some happy girls (and probably boys too) once this is complete!

Decking: Composite or Wood?

Deck
Originally uploaded by sarahnmoore

At our house we have a wooden deck right outside the dinning room. The deck has a gazebo attached to it. I love it!

When one of the previous owners remodeled the house, they extended the stone wall on the front to save a place to build a deck that would be accessed from the master bedroom! Nice! But the deck never was completed.

So, once our money tree sprouts and produces fruit - does anyone know how long this takes?? - we will consider possibly building the deck. We even talked about putting a hot tub in the deck! How fun would that be?!

Anyways, the question is, should we go composite or real wood? I really like the sounds of the easy maintenance of the composite but do not like the sounds of it fading!

It looks like there are some good reviews concerning GeoDeck's material. I read that it shouldn't fade as much as others that shouldn't fade too much.

But there isn't anything like real wood where you can actually make it look like new with a refinish. As of now, I am not sold on the composite material, if I had to decide today I would probably go with the wood.

Does anyone have any experience or advice?