Cabin Playroom with Rope Bridge

Last week I showed you our Restoration Hardware inspired cabin playhouse. Today I am excited to share with you the rest of that build. We have a large space over our garage that is ideal for a playroom because it is removed from the main floor of the house. That is a nice way of saying it doesn’t matter if it becomes a disaster zone from time to time!

I knew from the start that I wanted to find a way to include a rope bridge in our design. Our ceilings are the standard 8 feet, so I had to give some consideration to where it would not be in the way. This is going to be a photo heavy post rather than using a lot of words. Here is what we ended up doing:

The attached mini cabin is a reading nook. The bookshelves inside double as stair to the crawl space above. The kids love climbing up there and having a space all their own. Building this separate structure took only a couple of evenings, but it is immensely popular, as you can see.

By lifting both structures off the ground we kept the floor plan as open as possible, while making the structures more exciting for the kids. It also allowed for the addition of the bridge. The bridge is secured to both structures via retired fire hose purchased on ebay for $20. The rest of the materials come from Lowes and Home Depot. The READ letters on the side are also from Home Depot and you can find them here.

Now here’s the best part: The entire cost for this project, including the two structures, slide, bridge, and interior designing (excluding the play kitchen in the main playhouse) came to under $400! We have had several kids climbing all over the playhouses all at once, including older kids. Our entire family has been in it, and one uncle even decided to test the kids’ slide out (not recommended, ahem). A niece said to me “I would love to have this, and I’m 16!”

The best part is, really anyone who wants to do something like this can. With some time and some planning you can create your own, unique vision. Ana White has plans for building a bed version of this on her website so I will not be posting a tutorial here. However, I have made some significant changes to the design, so if you have any questions I am more than happy to answer them.

Happy building!