16 Extremely Handy Tips Before You Begin Building a Playhouse
Every person who’s into woodworking has his own style and his own favorite techniques and tricks. The following are some ideas and suggestions that I have devised or adopted, and found useful in one or more of the playhouse building projects I’ve done in the past.
1. If you are inexperienced in woodworking techniques, use the butt joint to join two pieces of wood.
2. The important thing to remember about the construction of a butt joint is that one must be accurate in sawing the right angles of the stock. An uneven cut will compound your difficulty and render the joint weak, if not useless. Small gaps in the playhouse you’re building can easily be filled with commercial or homemade wood filler, and then sanded afterward when the filler has hardened sufficiently to be worked.
3. Certain parts for building wooden playhouses are cut from dowels. Dowel rods are available in many lengths and diameters. The standard diameter sizes are 1/8 to 2½ inches. An old rolling pin will suffice for larger diameters. Chair and bench legs from discarded furniture or scraps from a woodturner's lathe bin might also prove useful.
4. The actual cutting of the dowel should be done with a small toothed saw, such as a back saw. A too coarse blade will rip the fibers and splinter the edge. This necessitates sanding, which can invariably put the dowel "out of round." Use tape around the dowel to mark the cutting edge. This will also serve to minimize possible splintering as you saw.
5. Predrill intended screw holes with a drill bit smaller in diameter than the screw. It is also helpful to apply thick paste wax in very small amounts to the threaded portion of the screw. This lubricates the screw and wood as drilling is underway.
6. Never discard wood scraps no matter what the size or condition. They may be used in building future playhouses if only for accent pieces requiring minute amounts.
7. Read manufacturer's instructions on all materials requiring mixing, application, and gluing. These directions, no matter how tedious, are designed to give their product optimal performance.
8. If children are to play in wooden playhouses, use nontoxic materials to prevent accidental poisoning if parts are placed in the child's mouth or a splinter breaks the skin.
9. Dust particles are the enemy of woodfinishers. As dust-free an environment as possible is the best one.
10. Clean all brushes and articles that have come into contact with sealers, varnishes, stains, glues, paint, resins, and other material likely to soil or ruin reusable items. Consider the use of disposable materials such as very cheap hog bristle brushes, cardboard pails, plastic floor covers, dust mask filters, plastic aprons, and paper cups. Avoid styrofoam materials, as they are not resistant to most solvents.
11. Mark all containers with contents, date of preparation, ingredients, "toxic" or "nontoxic," date of last use.
12. Save small glass and metal jars to be used for storage of nails, pins, screws, brads, grommets, hinges, clips, touch-up brushes, washers, wing nuts, brads, staples, and a hundred other small items that are easily misplaced and that tend to clutter the workbench.
13. If available, consider using a portable hair blower equipped with a heater switch. It is not a particularly expensive item and can be used to dry small and hard to reach areas. It is not, however, recommended that the dryer be used for overall drying of glues, varnishes, etc, since these require slow, even drying for proper curing.
14. If the wood of your children’s playhouse is to be finished with lacquers or varnishes, try to suspend the item from an overhead wire by means of a hanger (coat hanger, thick wire). Air circulation all around the playhouse and as little contact with other objects as possible will facilitate the hardening of the finish.
15. At the end of each work session, discard waste, exhausted pieces of sandpaper, steel wool, wood shavings, fragments of useless material, mixing containers, etc. Nothing is more depressing than having to return to the workbench the next day and face the leftovers of a woodman's orgy.
16. Innocuous as they are, gnats, flies, ants, termites, and other tiny insects always seem to appear just as the can of varnish is opened and applied. I offset this nuisance by using an exhaust fan, which keeps insects at bay.
2. The important thing to remember about the construction of a butt joint is that one must be accurate in sawing the right angles of the stock. An uneven cut will compound your difficulty and render the joint weak, if not useless. Small gaps in the playhouse you’re building can easily be filled with commercial or homemade wood filler, and then sanded afterward when the filler has hardened sufficiently to be worked.
3. Certain parts for building wooden playhouses are cut from dowels. Dowel rods are available in many lengths and diameters. The standard diameter sizes are 1/8 to 2½ inches. An old rolling pin will suffice for larger diameters. Chair and bench legs from discarded furniture or scraps from a woodturner's lathe bin might also prove useful.
4. The actual cutting of the dowel should be done with a small toothed saw, such as a back saw. A too coarse blade will rip the fibers and splinter the edge. This necessitates sanding, which can invariably put the dowel "out of round." Use tape around the dowel to mark the cutting edge. This will also serve to minimize possible splintering as you saw.
5. Predrill intended screw holes with a drill bit smaller in diameter than the screw. It is also helpful to apply thick paste wax in very small amounts to the threaded portion of the screw. This lubricates the screw and wood as drilling is underway.
6. Never discard wood scraps no matter what the size or condition. They may be used in building future playhouses if only for accent pieces requiring minute amounts.
7. Read manufacturer's instructions on all materials requiring mixing, application, and gluing. These directions, no matter how tedious, are designed to give their product optimal performance.
8. If children are to play in wooden playhouses, use nontoxic materials to prevent accidental poisoning if parts are placed in the child's mouth or a splinter breaks the skin.
9. Dust particles are the enemy of woodfinishers. As dust-free an environment as possible is the best one.
10. Clean all brushes and articles that have come into contact with sealers, varnishes, stains, glues, paint, resins, and other material likely to soil or ruin reusable items. Consider the use of disposable materials such as very cheap hog bristle brushes, cardboard pails, plastic floor covers, dust mask filters, plastic aprons, and paper cups. Avoid styrofoam materials, as they are not resistant to most solvents.
11. Mark all containers with contents, date of preparation, ingredients, "toxic" or "nontoxic," date of last use.
12. Save small glass and metal jars to be used for storage of nails, pins, screws, brads, grommets, hinges, clips, touch-up brushes, washers, wing nuts, brads, staples, and a hundred other small items that are easily misplaced and that tend to clutter the workbench.
13. If available, consider using a portable hair blower equipped with a heater switch. It is not a particularly expensive item and can be used to dry small and hard to reach areas. It is not, however, recommended that the dryer be used for overall drying of glues, varnishes, etc, since these require slow, even drying for proper curing.
14. If the wood of your children’s playhouse is to be finished with lacquers or varnishes, try to suspend the item from an overhead wire by means of a hanger (coat hanger, thick wire). Air circulation all around the playhouse and as little contact with other objects as possible will facilitate the hardening of the finish.
15. At the end of each work session, discard waste, exhausted pieces of sandpaper, steel wool, wood shavings, fragments of useless material, mixing containers, etc. Nothing is more depressing than having to return to the workbench the next day and face the leftovers of a woodman's orgy.
16. Innocuous as they are, gnats, flies, ants, termites, and other tiny insects always seem to appear just as the can of varnish is opened and applied. I offset this nuisance by using an exhaust fan, which keeps insects at bay.