The day before we arrive, the school yard sits empty, waiting for the magic to begin…
Josie (almost 16 years old now) stopped by our shop last Sunday with her mom, Michelle, to visit her old Garden Playhouse. Josie enjoyed her Barbara Butler Garden Playhouse from age 3 to 15 and then decided to donate it to help raise money for a good cause. Barbara collaborated by throwing her skills at refurbishing and re-creating the playhouse, using reclaimed materials…
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New, exciting, public use play structure that Barbara custom-designed for the Contra Costa Jewish Day School in Lafayette, CA. It will be a fully enclosed, self-contained redwood & rope netting play structure built up on top of 8′ high concrete planter boxes and running along the edge of the play space…
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Join us at the September 24th fund raising event for Coyote Point Museum!
Barbara’s “Garden Potpourri” playhouse, made from 100% reclaimed materials, will be auctioned to highest bidder!
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Barbara’s “pre-designed” Robin Hood’s Fort is popular for good reasons: lot’s of play activities, choose how many swings (1, 2 or 3), add features like a roof, choose your style of railing (rope or wood), pick the configuration that works best for your yard (how about the rock wall on the front?) and choose your own colors!
During the initial design process, Barbara, Jeff & Marco spend a day doing a “stick-out” on site, using rough strips of wood to layout the shape of the Clubhouse on the hillside.
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Crooked Gap Clubhouse is custom designed to fit on the side of a very challenging hill. The entrance ramp let’s kids walk across to the Clubhouse deck which is perched on the hillside…
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This gently used Hideaway Fort is “For Sale by Owner” on our web site for the incredibly low price of $2,500.
Located in Davis, CA it is just waiting for it’s new home. You will have to transport and re-assemble (or you can hire us to do it). Well worth it – the cost is over $12,000 new!
Barbara and crew finished installing this tree fort in May but we haven’t had time to post it to our website yet. So here is a sneak preview of Verde Tree Fort: all combinations of green on the outside…
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The Cozy Cabin is our smallest playhouse: perfectly sized for kids ages 1 to 5 years old. It will fit in a corner, on a deck, inside a play room or in the middle of a garden! Young children love to go inside, close the door, open the shutters, slide the “peek-a-boo”, put mail in the mail slot, peek through the cut-outs and then invite you in. It is exactly right for their size.
Here’s a new design I’m hoping to build. I use the caveman program PAINT to draw my ideas right on the photo. I like the restrictions of the Paint program – not very many choices, can only undo about 7 steps, makes me feel like a kid!
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Every spring & summer, when there are “holes” in our build/install schedule, our crew goes out and refurbishes some older ones. It is amazing how resilient redwood is.
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Barbara’s tree houses were featured in the Insight page of the July Real Estate & Design issue of Hamptons Magazine. The article featured an image her East Hampton Treehouse, designed and built in 2007 and referenced her newest tree house, The Long Island Treehouse, just built and installed in Southampton two months ago.
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We’ve done tons of ziplines and I never get tired of them! Each one presents a different challenge because the trees, the distance and the slope are always different. My ideal backyard zip line ride goes between two trees and involves jumping off of a tree perch to start the ride.
Hooray! Plans have been approved for me to start building a Rustic Treefort, using old logs as well as our usual redwood lumber. Here’s my sketch of what we’ll be making:
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The crew returned on Friday to finish the details, pack up all of our tools & materials, and apply a final coat of tung-oil to the play structure. We were right on schedule and just in time – the client was having a huge party with 150 guests on Saturday to celebrate the 4th of July.
It takes strength, agility and team work to put a roof up on a 2-story play set. Barbara, the overseer (and also referred to as the “clucker”) documented the process with her camera while keeping watch and making sure all went safely & smoothly…
Back at the shop, Rudi is also working on adding color to the Cozy Cabin, our next project. Here he has just finished staining the Universe “cut-outs” on the back wall (star, moon & planet) and has cut around the carvings with the wall color.
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Barbara forgot to download the site images from yesterday’s install, so here are a couple of shop pictures instead. The client had a last minute request for a Pirate’s Wall Cupboard with “crossed swords”.