Building my kid a playhouse myself - am I out of my mind?

Built one of these for my kids a couple summers back, so here's what I learned. On lumber cost, don't try to price it board by board in your head. Most decent plans come with a cut list, and if yours doesn't, make one yourself listing every board size and length. Then either email that list to the lumberyard for a quote or walk the aisles at the big box store with your list on your phone and jot prices as you go. Add 15 percent for waste and screwups, because you will miscount a cut at some point. Budget for hardware too, it adds up faster than you'd think. A big box of structural screws, carriage bolts for the swing beam hangers, and the swing hangers themselves can run a few hundred bucks easy. Also price the slide separately, that's often the single priciest piece and the plans usally assume you buy it.

I've been looking at a slightly different layout, one that's mostly just a swing beam and some basic platform without the full playhouse. Since I'm new to building things like this, I wonder if the required footings change at all depending on whether you are supporting a heavy swing or just a basic ground-level frame. I read that soft clay makes a huge difference, so if anyone has dealt with really damp or poor soil, is concrete footing a necessity or can the spikes handle the weight?

I built a kid's play area a few years back and the biggest headache wasn't the heavy lifting, it was keeping track of which board went where. I ended up using a specific brand of bright neon paint to mark the ends of every cut before I put it into the pile. It seemed like a small thing, but being able to quickly see if I had the right piece for the frame made the entire assembly go much smoother than if I had just relied on the plans.

Since you are mixing a playhouse and a swing set, you have a lot of moving parts. Are you planning to build the ladder and slide directly onto a single platform or are you planning to do them as seperate additions later?

That 15 percent waste figure is likely overkill. I think that estimate is probly too high for this type of build. If you're following a detailed cut list and aren't making major mistakes during assembly, the amount of lumber wasted on cuts shoud be closer to 5 percent at the absolute most. You might be factoring in too much for human error instead of just construction inefficiency. I've seen simpler projects where the waste was under 10 percent, especally if the framing is straightforward and you don't have to custom-cut every piece.

I'm leaning toward concrete footings over those spikes regardless of the soil, especially with a playhouse structure. When I finished a small raised structure last year, I learned that the critical point isn't just the weight of the deck itself, but the concentrated load from the roof structure. For a typical small playhouse, I ensured my main posts were spaced exactly six feet apart to prevent excessive racking. If you're going to build the roof yourself, make sure your headers are adequately sized. Using 2x8 framing instead of 2x6s for the top platform will simplify the overall load calculation and make the whole thing feel much more solid. Good luck with the build!