THIS was a BIG project! And took us almost two months with all the craziness of summer traveling but we finally got the playhouse from the driveway to it's little home in the backyard. And of course one project turned itself into three and we also retrofitted the chicken coop, moved and changed up the playpit, put in stone pavers, built a foundation for the playhouse and swingset and built a water table (oh wait, is that more than three projects? Ask my husband ;) So the past two weekends have been backyard moving and shaking... here's what we did.

Lots of pulling out the old and bringing in base rock...

I was even impressed with my handy husband's ability to put in four new drain pipes (anticipating lots of fun messiness from the water table) and three new water spickets (a hose, a drinking fountain and one for the water feature)

Daddy's little helper

A new slopped base for the turf in the playpit and another drain (oh yeah, that makes five :)

The chicken coop is a little more contained and they can't kick dirt out everywhere anymore. Francie and Dad both hammering

Now on the MOVING a 5,000 pound structure (pretty much a HOUSE). We had to take out our built in BBQ to get it through into the backyard... I was so sad, Heff and I built it and put the flagstone on ourselves a few years ago

Wearing her safety shades like Daddy

Bed head getting her stethescope (I can't even try to type it out the funny way she says it) from the playhouse (now rasied up on blocks)

"Here Dad, let me check your heart-a-beat to make sure you aren't working too hard"

"Oops." May have interfered with Dad. Caught in the act choking down a four letter word? ;)

Heff used his Dad's old hydrolic farm jacks to lift it enough to put the fancy new casters on

Everything in the backyard put asaide Saturday fot the big MOVE

First push from the forklift/tractor we rented and the fancy casters fell over. Back up plan = old farm casters. (not an easy process to lift it up again and get these under!)

We were all so excited Saturday morning to watch the big playhouse move... turns out it would take almost 12 hours and the excitement was limited to inch by inch...

"Come on Francie, let's go play while the Dad's work on this"

Thanks to Miles, Ben and Shaun our friendly engineer and muscle power neighbors who spent the WHOLE day helping us! We never would have been able to move it in a day without them

They moved the playhouse finally back towards the garage so they had enough room to get the forklift through and into the backyard. Watching the progress...

MAN power

When things were taking too long, Francie, Emma and Owen took matters into their own hands.

Inching through the garage/house narrow passage.

Too tight of a fit, gutters had to come off the garage!

A spectator sport.

"How the heck are we going to do this?"

Since the forklift tines were on the front of the WIDE side of the playhouse, we (like how I say "we" :) had to rig chains from the narrow side and PULL with the forklift