Blog Index | Peter Heydon ~ Personal Space

Cubby House Project – 05 Frame Construction

Back wall frame built 26 December 2014 and clamped onto the floor board for size. Noggins were added later for support.

29 December 2014

Wall frames with windows (500x500mm) stacked together with the back wall frame (with the noggins fitted. All noggins were aligned for the fitting of the two sheets of ply.

30 December 2014

Frame for the front wall

Assembled with kids. The door frame (1235mm) is just taller then my 7 year old, and the windows allows my 4 year old to see over the sill.

Cubby House Project – 04 The Floor Part 2

23 December 2014 – Replacing Pavers with Posts

Marked out the location of the holes with tent pegs while the floor was in position. Had measured the height of each stack of pavers, which would be added to my minimum pole height.

Started playing minecraft for real.

Preparation time, ~ 4-5 hours

26 December 2014 – Setting of Posts

Trip to Bunnings for:

4 x 1.8m treated pine posts (100mm diameter)
6 bags post-crete
More structural pine lengths (~12 x 2.4m lengths)

Scott gave me 2 x 1.8m pine posts. Had all the measurements to get all posts within 100mm of each other….but stuff it, cut them all in half.

Managed to get set 8 out of 12 posts before the day ended. The floor wasn’t 100% square, and distance between the bearers differed between the front and back.

Construction time ~ 4 hours, not including the excursion to Bunnings in the morning. I did manage to build the back wall frame in this time too.

29 December 2014

Dad helped build the two side frames. The first 8 posts were cut to a level height. We also lined up and set the last four posts in concrete. Rained a bit and had these last four posts covered with a tarp.

Construction time ~5 hours.

30 December 2014

A real day of action today, starting with cutting the last four posts:

Positioning the floor, and then nailing in cyclone straps on each of the outer posts.

Duration for the morning ~2 hours.

Cubby House Project – 03 The Floor Part 1

19 December 2014 – Procurement of first load of materials:

12 x 2.4m lengths structural pine (70x35mm)
2 x 12 mm structural ply (2400x1200m)
2 x 7mm ply (2400x1200mm)
4 x treated pine bearers (90x35mm)

Non-treated pine lengths (6 x 90x35mm x 3m) from Scott, picked up 13 December 2014

Location of the Cubby House

22 December 2014 – Commencement of assembling floor structure

Mounted on 41 pavers – perfectly level…

…but not perfectly safe. The drop was more then I anticipated

Construction time ~ 4 hours

Cubby House Project – 02 Planning

Placeholder for planning info

Cubby House Project – 01 Requirements Phase

May 2014

Thoughts on a cubby started around May. I found a collection of screen captures I had taken on my phone. For about 6 months it was only thoughts and no real planning had taken place.

23-30 November 2014

We had recently let the cat out of the bag to the kids that we were planning to build a cubby house for Christmas. I thought it would be a good exercise to determine what requirements they had and to see what could be incorporated into the design:

The 4 year old:

Design features include:

Two levels
Beds
Lifts
Bathroom
Work room
Study
Door
Windows
Dancing Room
Ballet Room (yes, separate to the Dancing Room)
8 Slides
Mat

The 7 year old:

Design features include:

Spy room
Bed
Lifts
Thermometer
Mat
Dinner room (pie/pizza only)
Computer

The daddy:

Design features include:

Fort built above sandpit
Ability for future expansion for rock wall, slides, ladders

I thought things were getting too complicated. I was also worried that this was getting too high.

I then tinkered in Sketchup to create a ground level phase 1, that could be built upon in the future:

Needless to say, I need to simply this fairly quickly, and as outlined in the the next section, created a fairly simple, but large enough cubby that should suit all immediate needs. I also have the ability to expand if required later (verandah out the front, adjacent fort at a higher level).

Before I settled on the final design, the only burning requirement from the kids was that it was to be big enough to sleep in. Which means it needs to be big enough for an adult to sleep in.