Playhouse West and North Wall Plans

This north wall is kicking my butt!  I'm still not done with the framing yet.  I still need to fasten some more pieces, and my excuse is that I ran out of screws!  Had I been better organized, I would have gotten more screws before running out.  To help me be better organized for my next run to Home Depot for building materials, I made these revised drawings for the south and west walls.  I added two more studs to support the big 4x6 over the doorway in the west wall, and I widened the top windows to 30" in the south wall.

Playhouse North Wall Continued ...

This north wall is taking me a long time.  I though I at least had the all the pieces cut and I would just need to screw them in when I took this photo below.

Now I realize my on-the-fly-design for the height of one window will not work.  It needs to be almost 2 inches higher than I have it now, which means I have to cut a lot of pieces over again.  Doh!  Here's the Rev 4 drawing for the north wall that documents the correct window heights and my other on-the-fly changes.

Playhouse North Wall

I'm finally moving on to building the north wall of the playhouse!  I've been debating how to manage the assembly of the four walls and when to raise them up.  I decided to move the east wall frame off of the foundation, and I parked it leaning against the side of our house because we have limited floor space.

Now I am building the north wall frame on the foundation.

Then I will build the south wall foundation.  But where should I do that?  If I build the north wall on the floor, it will be hard to install screws around the edges of the frame.  So I might just build the south wall on top of the finished north wall while it is still lying flat on the foundation!  I think that should work.

Playhouse East Wall

Today I got some extra time to build the playhouse!  I finally finished the framing for the east wall, but not without some aggravation!  I thought I was done before dinner.  Then after dinner, I realized I messed up the stud arrangement so that I didn't optimize how the load from the window header would transmit down to the floor.  I had to do reconstructive surgery on the frame until almost 10 PM.  Here's the drawing for this pain-in-the-ass east wall!

Playhouse Roof Redesign

Here's the redesigned roof I was thinking about yesterday.  I debated whether to keep all the windows on the south wall.  At this point, I decided to keep them all because it adds visual interest and reinforces the playhouse proportions even though it means that when the kids stand by the dormer roof window on the second floor (loft floor), they will have a window at their feet!

Okay, now I have to get back to the Kindle reading light project before the night is over.

Playhouse Redesign?

Here's the relocated second floor window on the east wall that I wrote about yesterday.

Today I also have the notion to break up the roof into two parts so that I can more easily make a second floor window on the south wall, which will have the nicest view looking out from the playhouse.  Here's my first pass at this approach.

The problem with this idea is that it will cut into the head room people will need as they climb up from the first floor to the second floor.  Perhaps I will stick with the previous single roof design and put in a "dormer roof" where I want to place the second floor window on the south side.  Of course I don't know how to build a dormer roof.  So that's another thing I have to learn!