A Play House for Baby Bear

Just to remind you, this is what our basement looks like

sketch of what our basement layout is before the play house build

photos showing the way the basement looked before the play house was built under the stairs

Here is what the area looked like before.  As you can see, we stored the play house in that corner and that also was a spark for this idea.  

Mr. Baby Bear Hugs and I both had different ideas of how we were going to do this.  We decided that the first step was to open up the wall so we could see what was inside and if there were any studs under the landing (the landing is right where the ceiling pitches).  You can see under the stairs since they are only slats, so we knew that there was an empty space there, but we could not see anything in detail.  We held the side of the house that we wanted to put on the Left side first and made sure that we knew it would be below the landing.  

dry wall with the cut through it for the window

Mr. BBH took an electric saw and cut a hole through where we drew the square opening for the window.  We did have some studs on that side, and we decided it was OK to cut right through them for the hole.  

piece of the play house attached to the wall with a hole for the window

The play house wall was not flat, so we cut off the plastic with the electric saw so that it would lay flat against the wall.  We secured it to the studs with decking screws that hold very strong into the wood.  Now that there was a hole, we could see that there were no studs on the wall where the ceiling pitches. 

Mr. BBH cutting though the dry wall to make a door hole.

Next we cut a hole in the wall where we wanted the opening for the door.  We wanted to make it as tall as possible to Baby Bear could potentially stand up and walk though (for now).  It also needed to be wide enough that an adult could go inside in case we needed to.  We measured the hole after it was cut so we could get wood to frame it out with.  

Mr. BBH adding the molding around the door

We chose a flat molding for the edges. Since there was no studs, we had to use wood glue to make the door frame.  We glued it and secured it with a clamp while it was drying.  We ended up screwing more wood on the reverse side so that the opening was strong and sturdy.  

view of the door almost finished

Next we added a piece of the plastic play house roof over the door and secured it into the stud and reinforced it with an L bracket on the right corner (you can see a little glimpse of it in the corner of the green roof).  Lastly, we installed a light inside so that it was bright and put some foam squares on the floor.  





Then we cleaned up so that we could see what Baby Bear thought about it (you can see our dog enjoying it too).  We will add more things as we go to make it a posh hideaway! 

I submitted this to Tip Me Tuesday!  Lets cross our fingers!