The Cedar Cottage Playhouse by Backyard Discovery

Take a video tour of our new playhouse! The house that Dad built……. Our new cedar cottage from Backyard Discovery is totally charming and the cedar smell is wonderful.  The kids adore it and are most fascinated with the door – playing knock knock again and again. 4 yr old Kenzie is also captivated by visions of future lemonade stands and ice cream sales out the “shop” style back window.

It’s gorgeous and the quality is fantastic. The price sounds reasonable at $399 however, you do need to be prepared for a ton of hard work putting it together as I explained in this video. Thanks to Dad for building this Cedar Cottage bit by bit by bit. If you didn’t watch the video, I explained that every piece of the cottage is separate. Board by board it was built by my husband. Panels didn’t come together as a unit, everything was individual pieces. Literally a box with a zillion nails, screws, and wood boards of all shapes and sizes. Dad says, the instructions were fabulous and he built it in a day. The box says it will take 3 hrs to build… however, the instruction manual says it will take 2 skilled laborers 6-8 hrs to put it together. My husband is not a skilled laborer, but as an engineer he is handy so was able to do it alone with a power drill in about the 8 hr time frame.  He said a Power Drill/Screwdriver tool is mandatory for this project! 8 hrs is a ton of work and we basically lost a day of play with Dad on the weekend when he built the cottage.  So certainly consider the time it will take to build. I promise you will be satisfied with the product as it is too stinking cute and something you feel proud to have in your yard vs. a plastic style kiddie playhouse.  Given this is a “big ticket” investment for backyard family fun, let’s recap the pros and cons:

Pros:

Price, Adorable, Charming, Tons of fun, All Cedar, Looks great in your yard

Cons:

Time consuming to build and being handy is a requirement. This is not a project Mom could have done on her own – or at least this Mom would never attempt it Also, the small bench that came with it – to sit outside the cottage is just too small and unstable for us to use safely with the kids. No big deal, as it is an “extra” element with that came with the playhouse,  but don’t expect it to be v. functional.

Disclosure: Thanks to Backyard Discovery, we received this Cedar Cottage Playhouse for free to facilitate our review.