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April 10, 2009

My Spring Break





This, my friends, is a playhouse we special ordered. This is my daughter's gift from us (and chip-ins from extended family) for her sixth birthday. Cute, no?

It's also most of my Spring Break. When you read the description you read things like "Floor kit included," "Everything is pre-cut, nothing to saw," and, best of all, "Easy to assemble with hammer, screwdriver, tape measure and level."

Friggin' liars. "Kit" my tuckus. It came wrapped in plastic on a pallet. When my neighbor and I opened it up to inventory the pieces it was something like 16,000 bits and pieces. Maybe.

Four of us guys (two of them with much building experience) spent around twelve hours on the Sunday before break framing the damn thing. We've spent the last week on and off adding stuff and priming and painting and more. We've done everything except finish painting and shingling the roof. No, really.

So it'll get done this weekend and my daughter will love it but SHEESH. Oh, and the tools we've had to use they forget to mention include a power drill, ladders, metal shears, freaking SCAFFOLDING, and yes, a damn saw.

I know it'll all be worth it and yadda yadda, but give me a break. I had no clue what I was getting into.

But then when do I?

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*This post has been edited to remove disparaging remarks about the company we bought it from.  It has come to my attention that a search of this product includes this post high up on the search results.  My daughter loves this thing and I don't want to badmouth anyone.  I'm here to blog about things like reading out loud to your kids more, not consumer protection.  Yes, you should know what you're getting into when you take on a project like this (or do what we did and have plenty of more knowledgeable friends to help out), but it's my blog and I'm going to go ahead and blur our some of the details.