We perviously had a larger garden farther back in the yard, it was on the ground which is very hard and rocky. It was tough to till and maintain, so it was taken down a few years ago.
My wife and teenage daughter have green thumbs and have planted herbs and tomatoes in pots over the past few years, but this year they wanted something more substantial. After an online search we found this plan.
It was a bit small for what the girls had planned, so with a little bit of tweaking, we changed the depth of the enclosure to 10'. It was pretty easy to do. Also the girls wanted the beds to be a bit deeper, so we made them three 2x6's deep instead of two
It was built by my wife and I in one weekend, well actually the truth is we built the entire enclosure, minus the door on Saturday about 10am and finish up about 5:30pm. I built the door the next day and we hung it together.
Just an FYI, I have quite a bit of woodworking experience and have a workshop with table saw, band saw and much, much more. I did use the table saw for most of the cuts, with the exception of the gate support which I cut using the band saw.
One caveat, if you have the lumber yard cut any pieces for you, make sure all the lumber is the same length. It's kind os a nit picky thing, but none of the lumber was exactly the length shown on the labels. If you want all the joints to be "perfect" I suggest measuring and cutting all the pieces to the correct length to match the plans.
We also used an industrial hand held staple gun to fasten the chicken wire.
The cost of all the materials, including two sets of work gloves came out to $447.92 from Home Depot in 2020.
We are now waiting for a delivery of the top soil to fill the beds. Since we used weatherguard lumber, we are going to gat plastic sheeting and line the beds.
It was a fun project and my girls are looking forward to planting all their seedlings.
For fun we made a time lapse video, which I have uploaded to Youtube. If you watch closely, you will see that we started the build in one area of the yard and moved it because the ground sloped much more than we originally thought.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7vvBLy034U&list=WL&index=112&t=0s
I hope that our experience may help others in some small way.
Thank you Ana for making these plans available!!
Comments
Ana White
Thu, 01/30/2014 - 10:32
Adorable!
What a lucky little girl, great job on this build!
ShushiGirl
Fri, 01/31/2014 - 13:29
Thank You Ana!!
Thank You Ana!!
birdsandsoap
Fri, 01/31/2014 - 20:41
Ah! I love it! I love the
Ah! I love it! I love the roof on the lower level, this turned out adorable!
ShushiGirl
Sun, 02/02/2014 - 18:32
Thank you!
We had fun making this as a family :)
junior2725
Sun, 02/02/2014 - 22:11
Awesome Job
I am looking at making this for my daughter and I also want to do a playhouse on the bottom as she is a single child. Did you just extend the opening to the bottom bunk to the floor and then extend the bottom windows down some to let in more light? Also, I love the idea of switching the storage from the stairs to inside the playhouse. If possible could you elaborate on how you did this. Thank you.
ShushiGirl
Tue, 02/04/2014 - 15:46
Sure Thing
We omitted the bottom bunk and took it straight to the floor. We left the side panel clear but the frame until we built the stairs then added trim & side boards around the cubbies.
nadia37
Sat, 05/24/2014 - 07:51
Oh, the colors!
First of all, what an amazing job on your build! I was looking for ideas for a playhouse and I will be modifying the plans for Sweet Pea Bunk beds and your build let's me know how get it can be. But what colors did you use? The look great together!
E81firegirl
Sun, 07/17/2016 - 14:49
So adorable!
I love the changes on this! I had a question. What did you use for the roof and is the lower roof section built to the same specifications as the upper roof?
MummaKrissy
Sun, 06/20/2021 - 08:12
I LOVE THIS!! Thank you for…
I LOVE THIS!! Thank you for sharing!