Wooden painted cubby house

This summer holiday, we finally found time to make our much talked about cubby house for the kids. My husband used pallets for the base, left over wood from when he made our pergola and bought some sheets of plywood from the hardware store.

For the windows, the kids requested a butterly and bat cut out. My husband drew the outline with pencil. He then used a jigsaw to cut the holes.

It was amazingly quick and simple.

The kids and I were in charge of painting. There was a bit of debate around colour. Green was a definite but Alex wanted blue and Jasmine purple. In the end we decided that green and purple were a good match to the agapanthas in our garden. I did most of the painting though the kids were really keen to help. The only problem with letting them help was trying to curtail the mess. They managed to drip paint everywhere and totally cover their shoes. Lucky they were wearing their old worn out shoes! In the end I encouraged the kids to paint a spare piece of plywood with their student paints while I focused on the cubby.

We added some pattern by spray painting around leaves. The kids went around the garden collecting a variety of leaves. We used blu-tack to stick the leaves to the walls.

The kids practiced using the spray cans on newspaper first. Again it was a bit tricky for them and messy so I did most of the spraying.

We found some gloves for Jasmine which made it much easier for her to help peal off the leaves without coating her fingers in the smelly paint.

I was recently given a good tip. If you have paint on you and need to use turps to remove it, finish off by squeezing lime on your skin and it removes the smell.