Playhouses

Outdoor Playhouse

Playhouses have been around for a long time. Playschool and Fisher-Price have been making pint-sized homes for children to play in for years. They started off as simple plastic structures with empty frames for windows, and perhaps a working door; they’ve grown both bigger and more elaborate.

Plastic Playhouses

Plastic playhouses are both the simplest and least expensive form of playhouse. These small plastic pretend homes run a couple hundred dollars a piece. They’re generally about 4 feet tall and their dimensions inside are just large enough for one or two children to play inside. They’re often made of hard plastic, so they remain durable year round. Just clean them up and they’re ready for re-use. And clean-up is an ease since you can pretty much just use your hose and rinse the grime away. They also tend to come in various styles and designs, such as pink with white trim for girls or blue and red for boys. They may even be character specific, featuring cartoon characters such as Dora the Explorer, or Spider-man.

Custom Playhouses

A popular item today is customized playhouses. You can have playhouses designed to your exact specifications for your children to play in. Anything from a cottage, to a castle, and even a Victorian style home. Playhouses can be anything you chose, now, even an exact miniaturized replica of your own home. Children, of course, love these customized playhouses as they are more like a real home than anything Playschool or Fisher-Price can come up with. Often, these customized playhouses are anywhere form 8 to 15 feet tall. They can have hardwood floors, brick exteriors, and even air conditioning and satellite television. And of course, with these bigger, better, more elaborate playhouses come bigger price tags. The average price for one of these customized realistic playhouses in $5,000-$10,000. Some of the best sellers for a company called La Petite Maison run in the $25,000-$75,000 range.

And it can get even more outrageous than that. In 2006, a family in Los Angeles had a playhouse built which was 15 feet tall, two stories (with two decks on the roof), a sleeping loft and a water slide going out the back. The price for this over-the-top playhouse was $240,000. That’s even more money than the median price for a single-family home ($218,000). These elaborate playhouses even come with complete plumbing.