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