Free Plans For Outside Playhouse – Making A Fort

The kids are restless and watching too much TV or else they are glued to the computer or the video games. You want them outside enjoying the fresh air and getting some exercise. In your day kids played outdoors and were rarely stuck indoors! You are looking at all that garden space and suddenly it hits you – why don’t you build them a outside playhouse, something of their own where they can play and have friends over. If you build it outdoors at the end of the garden they could very well start world war III and it won’t disturb your peace and quiet.
When you have an all boy’s contingent or even girls who want to be boys, their ideas about what they want for a playhouse seldom conform to yours. Ask them because it is going to be their play space. If your kids want a fort, you can easily get a set of free plans for outside playhouse from the internet. Don’t rush it, take the time to find a really good site that provides you with instructions that you can easily follow and lots of other tips and advice. Make sure that the materials list is included.

Pick a spot for you Outside Playhouse

Pick a spot in your garden, level the ground, lay out your materials and tools and get started. Building a fort for your kids is not a very time consuming or expensive affair and you will earn the undying gratitude of the children. Keep it simple, you can always decorate once the basic structure is in place.

Prepare all the things needed in building Outside Playhouse

Follow the instructions given with your plans for the outside playhouse and use plywood to construct the fort playhouse. Make sure your measurements are accurate and that the fort is wide enough for your children and their friends to play in it. You will need to buy sandpaper, brown paint, waterproof paint, hinges with screws and some heavy rocks or concrete blocks, all available at your local hardware store.
Prepare your materials and tools and it is advisable to factor in a floor for the fort playhouse, otherwise your kids will be tracking sand into the house every time they play in their fort and it will be worse when it rains because then you will have a house full of mud.
Your first job will be to sand down the wood to remove the splinters, and then line up the walls and mark them off at equidistant points. Screw in your metal hinges and then stand up the walls. Now move on to the base; with the outsides standing upright put the plywood in the center of the walls and make sure that the entire structure is level. Now fix the metal brackets to the floor first at four points and then to the walls.
You could always make a more permanent structure by digging holes and inserting posts, then pouring concrete over it and leaving it to set. Then the fort structure is constructed inside the joists and firmly nailed in place. This will give the structure more permanence. When all of this is completed you can start painting the fort and I’m sure you will have many willing hands to help you when you begin and liberally paint spattered children when you end!