Beachy Backyard Cabana for Kids

I've been meaning to post these pictures for some time now. I'm lucky to get it in before the snow starts to fall. It's amazing how the time flies when you have a newborn! 

It took several weeks to complete this project as we were trying to beat the rain for 4 weekends in a row, but we finally finished our playhouse for the kiddies just in time for summer and the arrival of our baby!!

We wanted to go for a Key West theme with the colors, sort of like a beach cabana. The girls love it and picked out the colors themselves. Now we just need to cover the grass with sand and make it a beach! Right?

We found some plans online to help guide us. Here are the plans we referenced: The Handmade Home She has an amazing website! We did have to do some modifications to best suit the look and structure we were looking for.

Some structural differences to note are...

• Cement block anchors

• Extra support braces

• The fiberglass corrugated roof in translucent white

• Roof cap

• Enclosed front entrance at the roof

• Climbing wall (built from scratch and used these climbing stones)

• Ladder (used scrap wood)

• Siding of the house (much easier to put up and saves a ton of time)

This baby is solid! When I mean solid, I mean it doesn't move an inch. We fit 8 adults and a couple of children up on the deck and it still didn't budge! We get a lot of rain and I wanted to make sure the wood pillars didn't rot while touching the ground so we used the cement support blocks.

I really like how we used the white translucent corrugated fiberglass roofing. It lets in more light  than the metal roofing does and it gives it a softer touch to go along with the beachy theme.

We even added some plant hooks at the front of the structure to hang some planters for the extra girlie touch! Since my daughter loves to play teacher, we definitely needed to add this chalk board that we secured on the back wall. I used the back side of the leftover siding and chalk paint.