How to Build an Outdoor Playhouse for Kids

Learn to build a playhouse with sandbox, slide, climbing wall, and roof in your own backyard.

Welcome to our outdoor playhouse, aka: The Adventure Clubhouse!

We were able to turn a corner of our patio into the perfect wooden playhouse for our kids this summer. Even though we do not have a large yard, the outdoor playhouse is full of fun.

The kids spend hours in the sandbox, host club meetings in the clubhouse, and climb all over the wooden playhouse.

I can’t wait to share all the details of our playhouse build.

DIY Wooden Playhouse

If you have been following along, you may have seen some of the stages of our kids outdoor playhouse. We have been working on it over the summer.

I have wanted to build a playhouse for my kids for years now, but always figured our yard was too small for it.

This year I decided I needed to stop making excuses!

So we built the perfect small backyard playhouse for the kids.

Our outdoor wooden playhouse is only 5′ x 7′ but is perfect for our kids big imaginations!

As soon as the walls were up, my daughter started an “Adventure Club”. She gathers anyone she can and they talk about nature, create, and have all kinds of fun.

The outdoor playhouse is the perfect clubhouse. The covered loft makes it perfect for having meetings any time of the year.

One of the requests my daughter had for their clubhouse was a chalkboard. It was very important to have a place to write on during meetings.

I found a magnetic steel chalkboard that can hold up to the elements outdoors. It was the perfect solution for the outdoor playhouse. And with a box of sidewalk chalk, the kids have used it for so many hours of fun.

The clubhouse also needed some seating. I built 4 kids patio chairs earlier in the year, and 2 of them fit nicely in the kids wooden playhouse.

They love having a place to sit. And they have been enjoying eating their lunch in the playhouse all summer long. Which makes me happy because my floors have stayed much cleaner 😉

The open framework was the perfect background for adding some shelves to the DIY playhouse. This idea was one of my daughter’s favorite from our inspiration playhouse, the Handmade Hideaway by The Handmade Home.

Because my daughter is a bit of a hoarder, shelves to store all her knick-knacks was a must.

But don’t think I didn’t add a lot of fun things for our son to the playhouse too! He loves the climbing wall (and what boy wouldn’t).

It was also his request to add a rope ladder to the outdoor playhouse. Something about a rope ladder just spoke to him.

And let’s not forget to talk about the sandbox! I have a love/hate relationship with the sandbox.

I love that my kids play in it all the time… for hours. They love to dig and the new sandbox keeps them from digging where they are not suppose to.

However, their clothing is always covered in sand! They leave sandy footprints everywhere they go. And I have to sweep right inside the door to the backyard constantly.

But it’s a small price to pay for imaginative & active kids.

However, the absolute best part of our new backyard playhouse is that we built it for less than the cost of buying a boring swing set!

Now I do love a swing set. And my daughter is sad her playhouse did not come with swings. But they have a much larger footprint. We would have to loose most of our grass area to a swing set.

Instead we created the perfect playhouse, clubhouse, activity area and sandbox, complete with a slide, for under $775. And there is still plenty of room for the kids to run around in our tiny backyard!

So if I have convinced you that you also need a outdoor playhouse for the kids in your backyard, I have all the details on how to build one yourself.

The posts all include detailed tutorials, build plans, supplies lists, and cost breakdown. And everything was done with basic tools. Time to get building!

How to build a kids wooden playhouse:

• Build the deck out of pressure treated lumber (deck plans here).
• Complete the 3 walls, including painting, then attach to deck (wall plans here).
• Build a railing on the open wall (railing plans here).
• Attach the slide and climbing wall for extra fun (slide & climbing wall plans here).
• Build roof rafters and attach roofing materials (roof plans here).
• Enjoy active kids all year long!

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