Coyote’s Clubhouse: A DIY Modern Kid’s Play House

This post is a Paid Partnership with National Hardware, all ideas and opinions are 100% my own

For this project, I used the KidKraft Modern Outdoor Playhouse. I’ve had my eye on this playhouse forever, and when it went on sale, I swooped it. I’ve seen some really cute DIY’s of this house on Pinterest, but they were all on the girlier side, and I wanted to create a masculine and modern aesthetic for Coyote. We also live in an all white Spanish house, so part of me wanted to do something completely different and live vicariously through Coyote’s playhouse, living out my dreams of one day having a modern all black house.

The hardest part of this project had to be organizing the parts and getting those little stirefoam flakes off of every piece of wood. If you’ve put one of these together, you’ll totally know what I mean! They’re tiny and everywhere, and they stick on everything!

Pro Tip: Put the house together where you want it to permanently live because it’s pretty akward to move it once it’s built.

Coyote was obsessed with helping me build it.

He went and got his play tools and helped me paint too:)

I’ll admit though, I secretly love putting things like this together. It’s therapeutic for me. Same for you?

I taped off the chalkboard (since it came with a red frame), and painted it black.

I started with a dark charcoal grey, but ended up switching to black halfway through, so I had to re-paint most of the house.

This is the roof piece.

Time to paint the window panes.

I used Plasti-Dip Spray paint to paint the window frames black. It’s like a rubber coating (that works great on plastic), that I’ve used for tons of projects and holds up really well.

It worked pretty well, but you could also use Rust-Oleum spray paint for plastic.

The areas I wanted to leave unpainted, I painted them with a clear Spar-Urethane water based sealer. This protects against the elements.

It was hard to decide what parts I was going to paint, and what parts I was going to leave natural.

I wanted to add some little custom features for Coyote. I thought he’d love his own lock so he could feel like he had privacy. I used a door latch from National Hardware in matte black.

I think he loves it, the paint was barely dry and he was already insisting on eating his breakfast in his new house.

Another little feature I thought he would love would be his own string lights. So I drilled pilot holes along the roof and installed little black cup hooks from National Hardware and strung up the lights.

Next up was the interior. I drilled pilot holes and added more hooks for his cooking utensils and pots & pans.

I’m still thinking of other features to add: shelves, maybe some framed art of his, or a chalkboard, telephone, bench seat?

To really make his house feel complete, it had to have numbers. I used these modern house numbers from Home Depot.

My tip here though is to add the mailbox before installing the numbers. I thought I spaced everything out correctly, but I had to drill new holes for the mailbox, because when I went to attach it, it was too close to the numbers to open and close.

Aren’t they cute?

I had planned on keeping the front door natural, but Coyote decided to “help” me paint, so the door ended up black:)

I mean, I think he’s a fan.

I have to say, I love how it came out!

Once we installed our turf, we moved it to it’s permanent home.

Comment below if you have any questions!

LINKS: Kid Kraft Modern Playhouse, Matte Black Paint, House Numbers, Mini Cup Hooks, Door Privacy Latch