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