Sunflower Playhouse Assembly

I built this Sunflower Cedar Playhouse in the backyard for my two boys who are 5 and 3. They just seem to love it everyday!

We had a bit of an unusual site location for the playhouse kit, as I didn't want to take up any flat space in the yard. So, I chose to locate the cedar playhouse on a sloped foundation. I knew that the floor system that is included in the kit would be very strong, so I figured the sloped foundation wouldn't be too difficult to install.



I started by measuring the total floor size. Then I roughly estimated the location of any necesary support beams. Being that the floor is only 6x9 and the back of the playhouse kit was going to rest on the hill, I made a very simple foundation for the sloped site:

You can see the three concrete stepping stones on the right which will support the back of the playhouse. The big plywood against the fence is actually an upside down view of the floor. The rest of layout is similar to a foundation for a deck. I used four 8" sonotubes cut into 24" lengths and buried half in to the ground (after first digging 12" deep holes in the dirt). Then I filled all the sonotubes with concrete. When the concrete was still wet, I placed four Simpson Strong Ties in the center to hold the 4x4 uprights.

Then when the concrete was dry I installed the wood you see in the picture above. None of the work was very difficult because it didn't really matter where the posts or boards were located. I just planned to rest the whole floor on top of the beams when they were level.