Childs wooden playhouse

[Bikesalot]

Daughter turns 3 in a few weeks and we want to get her a wooden (don’t like the look of plastic) playhouse for the garden. We’re fortunate enough to have a sizeable garden so any playhouse won’t be over bearing.

I’m interested to know any particular supplier / reviews people have used before. Here is a link of the sort of thing we’re after https://www.screwfix.com/p/shire-pixie-6-x-4-nomin...

My intention would be to put the play house on a base so it doesn’t rot from the bottom up, I do appreciate there is a limit to the quality for the value spent..circa £500 maximum for the playhouse.

All suggestions welcome!

[Rampant Golf]

We got our outdoor play set from here:

https://www.outdoortoys.com/products/rebo-lookout-...

Good quality and has stood up to the children and their friends abusing it for 5 years. Its due some treatment but there are no signs of rot, it just needs a freshen up.

[Purosangue]

without doubt the two best things I ever bought for our kids was a "built it yourself Big Backyard house with swings and slides ...and also a bouncy castle .

as it came with a manual and over 1000 parts ..






so well built has lasted over 12 years ,

bouncy castle was £400 , absolutely brilliant .. ended up having neighbours kids playing in the garden most of the summer

[kambites]

I looked at all the climbing frame/playhouse kits and they all seemed a bit... half-arsed so I ended up building one from scratch. I wanted it to be solid/waterproof enough that she could use it with her friends in poor weather, which nothing commercially available really seemed to be designed for. It ended up with a little four-seater picnic bench thing inside at one end, and just open space at the other, and it worked really well for somewhere to play when she had a few friends 'round, regardless of the weather.

It's gone now and sadly I don't really have a decent picture of it. This terrible thing taken by my daughter when she was about six with her finger half over the lens is the only one I really have.



I think it cost me a couple of hundred quid to build, but that was pre-covid so you can probably double that now. When I came to tear it down 6-7 years after building it, I realised I'd probably rather over-engineered it.

Edited by kambites on Friday 16th January 21:09

[TT86]

We went with this one from TP toys

https://www.tptoys.com/products/lavender-cottage-w...

Added the wooden side shutters. They are always on sale, I think we purchased at 20% off.

I went a bit OTT with it and treated all the knots properly and painted it up very well. Used felt shingles on the roof (it doesn't come with a roof covering). £30ish on Amazon and look super.

For the base I fitted some thin timber bearers and it's sitting on gravel grids as it's on a flower bed. Been in 18 months and no signs of any issues.

My 4 and 2 year old girls love it

[beambeam1]

We bought ours in 2024 from BillyOh! but the one we have doesn't seem to be listed anymore. Grand little thing, the perspex windows are a bit thin but the girls love it. I have had a small issue with water soaking the front as you can see in the first image, monitoring to see where the issue stems from and think I need to extend the roof overhang a little.





It is set between raised flowerbeds and sits on slabs and gravel grids. We keep an Ikea PLUFSIG folding mat inside it to make it a bit softer inside for the girls. I have wired an outdoor plug behind it and the plan is to turn it into a mini-cinema room for the girls and their cousins as they get older with some beanbags.

Edited by beambeam1 on Friday 16th January 23:40

[DonkeyApple]

kambites said:

I looked at all the climbing frame/playhouse kits and they all seemed a bit... half-arsed so I ended up building one from scratch. I wanted it to be solid/waterproof enough that she could use it with her friends in poor weather, which nothing commercially available really seemed to be designed for. It ended up with a little four-seater picnic bench thing inside at one end, and just open space at the other, and it worked really well for somewhere to play when she had a few friends 'round, regardless of the weather.

It's gone now and sadly I don't really have a decent picture of it. This terrible thing taken by my daughter when she was about six with her finger half over the lens is the only one I really have.



I think it cost me a couple of hundred quid to build, but that was pre-covid so you can probably double that now. When I came to tear it down 6-7 years after building it, I realised I'd probably rather over-engineered it.

Edited by kambites on Friday 16th January 21:09

Of course it was. Not at all taken by you during lockdown after the usual breakfast of gin on weetabix.

[Danns]

TT86 said:

We went with this one from TP toys

https://www.tptoys.com/products/lavender-cottage-w...

Added the wooden side shutters. They are always on sale, I think we purchased at 20% off.

I went a bit OTT with it and treated all the knots properly and painted it up very well. Used felt shingles on the roof (it doesn't come with a roof covering). £30ish on Amazon and look super.

For the base I fitted some thin timber bearers and it's sitting on gravel grids as it's on a flower bed. Been in 18 months and no signs of any issues.

My 4 and 2 year old girls love it

Cracking job on that, love the additional details - exact thing I’d do.

And a timely thread, also on the hunt for exactly this sort of thing, keep them coming!

[UTH]

Purosangue said:

without doubt the two best things I ever bought for our kids was a "built it yourself Big Backyard house with swings and slides ...and also a bouncy castle .

as it came with a manual and over 1000 parts ..






so well built has lasted over 12 years ,

bouncy castle was £400 , absolutely brilliant .. ended up having neighbours kids playing in the garden most of the summer

What’s your neighbour situation?
When I lived in Fulham, gardens stacked next to each other like a sardine can, in Covid our neighbour got a bouncy castle. The noise all fking day long drove about 30 people mad. I assume, because that’s probably how many people could hear it.

[Vincecj]

We used to build these. If you're going to build one yourself, allow for the growth of the child.

[Glassman]

When my two were young, I picked one up from an eBay seller. Whilst not enormous, it was large enough to have an upstairs in it (a section of floor about the size of a single bed) with a five-runged ladder rising up to it. From memory, I paid about £400.00 for it and hired a truck to collect it from Cambridge.

The main house was four panels. I bought two new sheets of shuttering ply for the roof and, with the help of a friend, constructed a frame to sit on stilts for the floor.

I loved doing it and saved a big chunk of money against what a new one of that size and style would have cost. Completed over a long weekend.

[alfabeat]

I built this years ago for my kids....I loved it :-)

Rope swings, rickety bridge, climbing wall, slide, cargo nets.....They loved it until they grew up :-(

[SKM1984]

If your anywhere near Derby we have a wooden swing set and slide/play house we want gone

[andyxxx]

I built a frame from scratch (purchased the plastic slide) which I attached to a large tree house.
I enjoyed designing and building it at a fraction of the cost of flat pack.

However neither of my girls used the tree house more than a handful of times (cos spiders/creepy crawlies)
They loved the climbing frame but the best bang for buck was undoubtedly the trampoline.

[kambites]

andyxxx said:

However neither of my girls used the tree house more than a handful of times (cos spiders/creepy crawlies)

Fortunately my daughter loves spiders and such like.