Victory!!! Version 1.0

Okay - I've been victorious for a while now, but I never got around to posting pics.

I still have 3 more phases to go, and I will -- as far as any of you know.

In the meantime, here's what the playhouse, in some of these pictures involved in some serious beta testing, looks like:

Open for Business.

Phew! What a weekend!

Phase 1 is complete. I knew it would be a lot of work to build this thing, but I did not account for what a pain it is to keep these boys from falling off of it. Safety rails are up, but they sure as hell gravitate to the big gaping holes that they could fall out of. yikes!

I'll try to upload some pictures later, but for now, the safety rails are up. The slide and rock wall are installed. We have foregone binoculars, for a periscope, which was easier to mount.

The climbing blocks/ steps proved a little too rough for little Z, so I installed some mini-steps, out of scraps of 2x6, cut to fit. This was a suggestion of both A, and a neighbor dad, who brought his 3 year old, and his 1 year old over for an early test run yesterday afternoon.

Installing the rock wall was a tremendous pain in the ass. Who knew you needed post hole diggers? I borrowed some, which were purchased by my neighbor in either 1981 or 1985, and was able to dig most of what I needed to dig, before the handle broke - as my neighbor tole me they would.

I think I have the phases sorted out. I'm pretty sure swing set is next, followed by the roof/ awning. The downstairs playhouse, I still think will be Phase 4, but after seeing how small that is, even for my 6 year old nephew, I don't know. N, you may recall, is already 2 1/2. Do I want to get into siding and windows and doors when I know he won't be able to fit inside in 3 years?

Of course, if I don't close up the bottom, that makes the whole decking the downstairs floor look a little silly. Same time, though, that should stabilize the whole structure in the event of a storm or anything.

Not bad for an hour's work.

Installed 5 boards on the upper deck tonight, after a run to the store, after the guys got to bed. I still have to remember to put screws in the middle of those boards.

Since I don't have to go to the store tomorrow, I should be able to put in the last two upper deck floor boards, and start with the safety rails...again - after the boys go to sleep...weather permitting.

Again with the ellipses, this guy!

Phase I.A.1.a.i

Okay, I can see how someone could look at the pictures in my last post and just think "This dude hasn't built anything. Those are just rectangles." Fair enough.

So, it is my pleasure to present...

Stairs.


Yesterday, Sunday, I designed, framed and completed most of three stairs, or climbing blocks, for my two guys to us to access the second story of their little palace. Also, I completed the floor structure for the first floor, and much of the second. The hold up now is lumber.


Tonight, Monday, was allegedly a night off. A was a total trooper, basically giving me up for the weekend to work on this, and tending to N & Z all by her lonesome, for like the 6th and 7th day straight. So, tonight she's chillin' with her homegirl, while I'm on Daddy duty.

So, I got the boys to bed, and then I brought out the table saw to do some light cutting, to get ready to install safety rails -- an integral part of what I'm now calling Phase 1.

Getting started, and knowing where I needed to end up, but not knowing how exactly I was going to do so has been a learning experience. Part of what I learned is that this project is going to go, formally, in about 4 phases. Each phase represents a point at which I could safely walk away, allow the boys to play and if need be, determine that the project is effectively completed.

Phase 1 is not yet finished... clearly. At the end of Phase 1, the house will have an open-air, fully decked lower floor (check), three climbing blocks/ stairs (almost check), a fully decked upper floor (half check), safety rails on the upper level and a safely installed slide, climbing rock wall, pirate ship wheel, and mounted binoculars.

I bought the slide, wheel and binoculars, and as I said Saturday I have the wall. What I don't yet have is all the lumber, and since actually purchasing and installing the lumber involved taking the car seats out of the SUV, and folding the seats down, and getting to the store, and spending money to do so, all of this probably after the boys go down for bed at 7:30...it's not quite as easy as it sounds.

Anyway, at the end of Phase 1, we'll have a functional playscape (not playhouse per se) that will look something like this:

...with safety rails.

...or will it look something like this:


I had planned on having the slide on the broad side, along, eventually, with a door, and maybe a window, but at this point, I'm considering switching the two, because the rock wall, and climbing blocks would be right next to each other. I'm open to any suggestions anyone may offer in the comments section... in the unlikely event anyone ever reads this... ever. Enough with the ellipses.

Phases 2, 3 and 4 are, as yet in an undetermined order. One phase involves the walling in of the lower deck, to actually turn the structure into a formal play house. Another phase is to install a roof or shade on the top to keep my little yella-headed kids from burning up like the vampires in that whatchacallit Anne Rice movie. And the other step would be to build the swing structure.

I can see a logic to doing any of these next. Obviously, the swing structure is the biggest upgrade to the overall play experience. I already bought the swings, and to tell the truth, I plan on installing the heavy duty swings, so that my hefty ass can sit on them. That would be nice to have, if the boys are in the playhouse, and I want to sit nearby. (You can maybe see my hammock in some of those pictures, but that dude doesn't get much use)

On the other hand, if I do that before the house is walled in, then I run the risk of a kid stepping out of the lower floor, right in front of someone who's swinging. Getting concussions are generally against house policy.

So there's the argument for doing the house first. It is also a big upgrade for the play experience, but doesn't raise the safety issue that the swing might present.

Clearly this is good, but it ignores the fact that I plan on installing house grade siding on the house structure, which means that only one side will be fully weather resistant, while the other will be essentially designed to keep out of the rain, raising the point that I should perhaps install the roof, or cover, which really does the least for improving playtime, before installing the walls.

But, I'm getting ahead of myself. First up is finishing the floors and rails. No telling when that will happen, but if first impressions, from my harshest critics are any indication, the sooner the better.

Going Up!

You know how some people talk a lot of shit about how they're going to do something, and they don't. We'll perhaps that's me, but only as far as blogging goes. As far as building a playhouse - oh it's on like Donkey Kong.

After obsessing over the last two weeks about how to build a patio cover, A & I decided that that was just a distraction, and that it was time to BUILD THE PLAYHOUSE.

Now, I played with the 3-d modeling software extensively. It must have been, I don't know, 15, 30 minutes. Now, when that's competing with sleep, that's a helluva lot of time. But mostly, over the course of the last few months, I've been sketching - poorly, but extensively. I've also been staring at the Stewart Strong Tie section of the Home Depot, cluelessly, but extensively. Going into this morning, I had only the vaguest idea of what I needed, and what I needed to do to turn a plastic rock wall, and a buttload of ideas into a functional playhouse.

Oh yeah, the plastic rock wall. About a month ago, it was raining like a mother, so I turned to A, and said "let's go walk around at Home Depot." Packed up the rascals, and we went to waste time. Now, I was actually looking at prices for totally unrelated items, but decided to stop by the playhouse section and help A get a crystal clear picture of the murky image in my mind of how this playhouse was going to come to be. While we were looking, I noticed that the $160 rock wall thingy that we were not planning on installing, primarily because of cost, was marked down to $30!!! Holy crap. We ran home, had lunch, put the boys down for nap, and I ran back, with a gift card, and bought that sucker. This was, of course, after it rang up $160, and I had to walk back and show the dude what the tag said. So, VICTORY!

So now the rock wall (called a Swing & Slide Lookout Mountain, if you want to Google it) sat in the garage while we were on vacation, for weeks and weeks and weeks, until today. Well, actually it didn't really move today. We didn't get that far. However, we got THIS FAR:


Of course, I choose to start this amidst the coming of a tropical wave. Now, to be clear, I live 60+ miles from the coast, and I don't actually know if any wave is affiliated with a tropical wave, but apparently it brings a shitload of rain. Like the weather guy says "it will be raining as far out as we can see," sort of shitload So some of this was done in fairly dry weather, some in a drizzle, some in a light sprinkle, and some after the fucking monsoon that overtook the area, which means that I was using an electric drill while basically kneeling in a puddle. Mom would not approve.

I started by framing up two opposite walls using, in part the Simpson Strong Ties that you can see in the picture at mid wall. Those hold what is going to be the second floor/ slide & climbing platform. Then I connected those walls, using the ties and a 2x4. Creating a 4 wall structure. Wow. I framed up the floor, as you can see, and I started to put additional 2x4s around the bottom, to get ready for a floor.

Crap.

The 2x4s - the last freaking thing I did - totally jacked up my mojo.


What I actually needed to do was use a 2x6 to frame up where the climbing "stairs" are going to go.



After N & Z got to bed, I got back outside, plugged everything up, sat down in a puddle, and started making magic. At the end of the day, I had the skeleton of a skeleton of a playhouse to be proud of. But it's more than I had this morning.

So what now?

Well, you see that frame on the right side, that has nothing attached to it. That's the bottom of the stairs. There will soon be 3 stairs there. Each measuring 24 inches across, 25 inches deep, and 16 inches tall. That should be tall enough to be fun for both boys, but a little challenging for my 16 month old. And no, the inches tall is not in tribute to him. It's in tribute to 48/3=16. It does equal 16, right?

So, anyway, I have to build the frames for those steps. 4x4 posts, of 16 inches high, 23 inches high, and 48 inches high separated by 25 inches, and for any wisdom beyond that, I'm probably going to have to go stare at that Simpson Strong Tie aisle again.

I got yer Blender right here

Okay, so the Blender era has ended. After hours and hours...well - 5 minutes - of "working" with Blender and getting nowhere, and I mean nowhere - I couldn't draw a line, much less a board by board recreation of a structure fit for my two little kings - Blender has been uninstalled.

I checked with a neighbor who does crap like this for a living, and he had never heard of blender. He knew, though, that I was a google fan, and was surprised that I hadn't played with Google SketchUp. So I checked it out, and for my purposes, it whoops Blender's three dimensional ass.

As a bonus, SketchUp allows one to place SketchUp-created models in Google Earth. I have no idea how to do this, but perhaps I'll place the model playhouse in my yard, when the time comes. Let me not get ahead of myself though.

In ease of use, it's not MS Paint, but as far as 3d modeling goes, it's about as close as I've been able to find. Psh! Who am I kidding? MS Paint still has it's way with me!

I have a very rough first draft, but it's more for me to actually learn the program than for actual modeling at this point. I'll have a version to share soon, but the one I'm working with now consists of a rectangle attached to a swing structure made only of 2-D lines. Needless to say, I'm going to need to model something capable of existing in a plane that is not exclusively linear in order to hold the weight of my boys, much less my own. I'm afraid we're a logocentric family that way.

In other news, that would likely not be noticed by the likes of whoever the hell you are, we're taking a Spring Break trip to visit friends - about an 8 hour car ride away - a 2 day drive for us now. So, now that I'm thinking about this again, now that I have found a program I can use, and get excited about, I'm going to have to abandon it for a week or so. But we will have pens and paper, and maybe by then I'll be feeling confident enough to scan and share a line drawing of what it is I'm talking about here.

-J

It's gonna be awesome!

Planning for the playhouse is well underway. We have pencil drawings and catalogues, I have visited the Home Depot, and stared at the 3 shelves of playground/ playhouse equipment, with my mouth agape, both at the cost, and my utter cluelessness about how on earth I am going to accomplish this. This... is progress.

A and I have brainstormed a little about what this monstrosity is going to look like. These are a few of our conclusions/pipe dreams/goals/silly ideas/commitments/mandatory elements/items for consideration, in no particular order:

The playhouse will be the first floor of a two story structure.

The swing frame will come off of one side of the playhouse.

The swing frame will support two swing sets and, initially, a trapeze, for a total of 3 stations.

When N & Z lose interest, hopefully in 17 years, we are converting this to something.

The swing frame will be made with this conversion in mind. Eventually, we'll be putting a porch swing where the swing sets will go initially.

The swing sets must be capable of holding my hearty, wholesome ass, which means, heavy duty swings and swing hangers.

The playhouse should maybe be tall enough for me to stand up in - as it might some day be a storage shed. That means ceilings of 6' plus. On the other hand, this means that the tower is going to be something like 10'-12' tall. Hmmm. This might take some thought.

There will be a slide off of the "roof" of the playhouse, or a platform on the way to the roof.

Okay, maybe I'm going to build this with a roof that could be adjusted without too much destruction.

We are likely to include a Pirate's Ship Wheel, though we sincerely hope that this does not attract actual pirates, whom I understand smell terrible and have little respect for copyright laws.

We are likely to include a telescope, although to discourage peeping, we may aim it at our house, which will provide the added benefit of enabling me to closely examine our roof.

uhm... I think that's it.

I'm working on renderings, but I wanted something in 3D, so that means I have to teach myself blender before I can actually draw anything. If you don't know, Blender is a shareware program created by people who are far smarter than me for use by people who are smarter than even them. I just started last night, but at this point, it appears to be about as easy as teaching yourself Chinese, using only the Beijing phone book.

Wish me luck, and be on the lookout for final renderings created by ms paint, and my forthcoming web page, fuckyoublender.org.

-J

Let's get to work...sort of.

A few days ago, I was thrust into the realization that I am, in the words of a colleague, "wholesome."

Yikes! Wholesome? Wow! I had never thought of that before, but the more consideration I gave it, it sort of became a "shoe fits" thing.

I have been happily married to A for just about 5 years. We have 2 kids. N who is turned two in January, and Z who just turned one this week. We live in a nice house, in a nice, normal neighborhood. We, all 4 of us, enjoy sports on TV or going to game in person. A & I enjoy a drink from time to time, but neither of us smokes or has ever done drugs. So, to paraphrase DMX - "fuckin' right I'm wholesome!"

As it turns out N, waking up from a nap, is laying on my shoulder right now. The only way we could be more wholesome is if we were eating apple pie, wearing matching American flag T-shirts.

There we go. Apparently I'm wholesome. What am I going to do about it? Well, as you may have gathered from the title of this blog, I am totally getting my wholesome on - I am building a playhouse.

This thing started innocently. Looking at my backyard, when we moved in about a year and a half ago, I had a vague conception that some day, it might be fun to, at some point, have a swing set, and a clubhouse for my two boys.

Then, when N's birthday rolled around, someone asked what he wanted/needed for a gift. The honest answer would have been nothing, considering that the things he really loves are plastic animals, wooden spoons, empty water bottles, steak knives and ladders. Since he already has those things he's golden, but we knew that wouldn't be a good enough answer for whoever was asking, so we said "money for Home Depot to build a playhouse" and the vague conception became something that...

(oops. kid wants snacks. save draft.)

(8 hours later. I hide nothing from you people!)

...is being supported financially by others - something that I'm expected to produce. So produce I shall.

For a number of reasons - primarily finances and time to work, I'm not actually going to start building until well into the Spring. Mostly, I don't want to work on this project if there is too little risk of dehydration, so I'm going to wait until the temperatures here in Houston are teetering between the 90s and the 170s.

Despite the month or more that I have before I start putting hammer to nail and finger, I have been obsessing. Yesterday was Z's birthday party, so more contributions - more pressure to get this done, and right. What kind of freak asks for Home Depot gift cards for his kids' first birthday. Looks fishy if the swings don't start swinging soon. So, the clock is ticking.

So, I'm blogging the process. Hopefully the blogging won't be too self-involved. Hopefully this doesn't become another kid-hyper-involved daddyblog. Hopefully I won't spend the next few months complaining about the rising cost of lumber. However, I will write about me; I will certainly write about N & Z - my customers for this project, and A, the foreman of much of my life; and I do intend to write about the process of design, budget, re-design, go-over-budget, build. Ultimately though, I hope I can make some fun of myself, have a good time writing about the good time I plan to have putting this thing together.

So, let's (uhm) get to work(-ish).

-J