At the beginning of August this year, Megan and I had the idea to re-paint the interior of the “Playhouse” we have in the back garden. Unlike once a couple years ago, where we painted a couple walls, then left it, this time we wanted to paint it all – every surface of the building – and what a task that turned out to be! Megan and I spent 3 afternoons/evenings painting, but once we were done, the work wasn’t finished – we found out some friends had some spare carpet that would fit in perfectly downstairs and it all spiralled from there! We then decided to completely renovate it into something more comfortable and worth spending time in, so here is the story of what we’ve done, or at least part 1!
Painting:
First up was clearing the playhouse of all the stuff inside, the old table, the bookshelf that was falling apart, and all the old cushions we had inside. This thankfully didn’t take too long, although we did have to work together to remove some things. Next on our list was laying out the newspaper, though as you can see – it all got a bit messed up after a pretty quickly!
Although we have in the past painted the playhouse, here you can see (in the white paint in both pictures) it was already starting to fade, so we began painting the feature wall with the “bathroom blue” colour, a much stronger colour that hopefully won’t fade as fast. We painted using some of the spare paint we had in the attic: “bathroom blue”, “apple green” (the leftovers from my bedroom), “bathroom white” and “light pink”. The bathroom colours are especially waterproof, so we used these for the ceilings, which were a NIGHTMARE to paint – all the paint just soaked in to the wood, which meant it took multiple thick coats – in often hard to reach places!
Once we were done – it turned out pretty nicely – although the place did look a little bare with just the painted walls and nothing else inside. This is partly what inspired us to do a complete renovation, not just painting. On the right, you can see the polka dot pattern Megan did on the bars to add extra detail to the playhouse – which turned out very nicely, and helped us choose the perfect fabric for the curtains.
Carpeting:
Next up was carpeting the downstairs floor, which we had got a LOT of paint on, despite the newspaper we laid out! We rolled up the old rug which we had in there, as it no longer fitted in, and then set to work trying to work out the jigsaw puzzle that was laying the pieces out!
Then we cut three pieces to the right size size, and set to work hammering all the nails in, with some help from dad.
It was very rewarding to see the final product here, although instead of spending long to admire it – we immediately covered it in cushions and tools!
Roofing:
One important thing we realised was that it wasn’t worth painting the playhouse unless we could prevent it from getting soaked again which was responsible for the fading. So we then went on to do some roofing work, completely covering the roof again with a clean, new sheet of roofing felt, weighing 20kg for 10m – so rather heavy to move!
Again dad came to help us with the roofing, he showed us how to put in all the nails and paint tar on the edges. This job was quite fun, though it involve a little risk on my part (see image of me standing on the very top of the ladder somewhat precariously!) – although there was someone holding the ladder so I didn’t fall!
As the plastic that we had used last year to protect the playhouse from rain had shredded due to the sunlight, we decided, as part of the roofing process, we would redo the plastic too, this time with longer lasting, UV-resistant plastic. Finally, we decided to paint the outside of the playhouse, which involved painting all the green pieces separately, which Megan and I did, while Mum and Dad painted the two non-plastic covered sides of the playhouse. I will include a picture of the finished outside in the next post.
Thank you for reading this post about the playhouse, I hope that I will be able to upload part 2 in the next few weeks, although things are going to get quite busy in the lead-up to Christmas! 🙂🙂🙂🙂
Yes, I did get the “1” back-to-front, it was… it was… artistic design, that’s what it was… (totally not an accident in my drawing, honest!)
