8 Foot Ceilings

Last year my friend Van presented the installation “Play with me” at CCP. I thought the cubby house she found to build it in was pretty impressive, possibly the most impressive cubby I had ever seen, until I stumbled upon this incredible site. “Good taste should begin early. We follow the basic principles of good design and apply them in a scale down version.” Amazing little houses for mini Martha Stewarts… and Martha Stewart canine equivalents. Bowl me over: 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5. “A discriminating family wouldn’t hire just anyone to design their home; our clients feel the same way about a playhouse for their children.” !!!

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26 Responses

  1. Agh! No no no. It’s al wrong.

  2. oh – that just brings out the kid in me, not that it ever left.
    These are quite amazing as well:

    http://www.gizmo.com.au/public/News/news.asp?articleid=1747

  3. mariabinns@hotmail.com says:

    just finished building amelia catherine (aged 3 and 1/3) a cubby house. Cost a fortune and it stands in the backard as a treated pine little hut. I now have the job of decorating it. I was thinking of getting my twin sister to put in a stained glass window (she makes them), getting a mate to make shelves for all the things she collects and for the cooking things (of course), making a mosaic doormat with a fairy on it. Mum found a little table and chair from bring out your rubbish week. I spent last night on the net deciding on the colour scheme and have chosen martha stewart favourite – a lovely soft pink and white gingham, with a mint green and more white. We are going to paint the outside pink and white stripes.My best mate would like to know who the cubby house is really for – me of course. i wanted one for fifteen years. dad started it but never got past the floor so I missed out!
    I am also going to have to name it with those little letters you can buy at spotlight. It already has a butterfly windchime in the window. I am also going to plant a little garden out the front. I am in so glad I had a little girl. So much fun.
    Some do-able cubby houses:
    http://www.cubbykraft.com/
    The other thing I always think about are those little foam seats that fold out and children can watch tv on them. Why do they only make them in winnie the pooh and barbie? Why not a lovely darkish denim (durable) with a pink and white gingham trim or something like that? If only I had the time and money I would start my own line of kids stuff !
    Mia

  4. susanwuest@telia.com says:

    THAT is pretty amazing. i cannot begin to imagine what something like that must cost. id like to have them build one and move in myself!as for your friends installation, “a terrible scene unfolds” sounds scary! was it?

  5. The average installation, says one article, is $18,000 US. That’s four times the average annual income where I live.

  6. My favourite cubby-house when I was a kid was always the one we put together ourselves, from an old shed and bits and pieces we scavenged from dad and in the neighbourhood. Didn’t look like much but i loved it! Half the fun was in building it.
    And for dogs, in Wallpaper magazine years ago they featured a “kennel” designed by Gucci. It looked more like a mini slicked up version of Frank Llyod-Wright’s Waterfall house, and didn’t have a price tag attached, but it did look fabulous!

  7. o my word… nevermind the kids and the dog, I want one of those little ouses for me, me, me. I’d sit in there all day and draw pictures of small things and sip tea from a china teacup dotted with daisies. And the sunlight would always spill through the windows just like in the photos! What a fairytale! Amazing. you find the most wonderful things on the web, claire!

  8. o, and Mia, Amelia Catherine’s little house sounds like a small wonder! What a lucky little girl!

  9. I want to be little again just so I can have one of those! As a little girl, all I wanted was my own little house in the backyard. Not too far away…just far enough and secret enough to be mine, but still be close enough to my mother. 🙂

  10. I find that kind of thing scary and very, very wrong. Average normal playhouses are great. I like what Faith said about building her own. When I was a kid and I would visit my great-grandmother, the kids who lived next door to her had a playhouse. It was simple but fun. They obviously didn’t build it but… I desperately wanted one.
    But you parents do know that many kids grow up to be teenagers who use those little houses for a little ellicit drug activity and such right? Ah Youth!

  11. annamartin@yahoo.com says:

    Nice houses…but steals the thunder from backyard camping and bedsheet forts held together by the kitchen chairs…all the fun kid stuff that kids can make themselves and use their imaginations to transform into spacestations and pirate ships. Kind of like buying a child a superexpensive toy and finding out they get more enjoyment from playing with the box…. They are kind of scary — like forcing kids to play like adults play, instead of letting them use their own resources and imaginations.

  12. I went to a baby shower on the weekend and saw the most amazing cubby but I wonder how the most fabarama cubby can compete with the sheet and table or bits of wood creations I made as a kid — not so designer but loaded with potential. Man, they were everything from a fairy castle to a rocket ship. And yeah, half the fun was in building it.

  13. I don’t think I’ve seen something quite as outrageous as those club houses. I, personally, wouldn’t drop 18 grand on a club house . . . but then again I’m male and my opinion probably has no weight! ;)~
    Needless to say little houses and forts are a blast when your a kid so your daughter is a lucky little girl.

  14. Ick! I am not going to buy one of these!! Are you kidding me? I am a big advocate of the kitchen-chair + sheet combo… while these places are incredible in their minatureness, their price tag and their lack of imagination on the part of the child makes them pretty sad really.

  15. What ever happened to a couple of planks of wood, a few rusty nails, a cardboard box and an old peppercorn tree?
    I would have to teach my dog how to sip champagne if I got one of those dog houses, but the problem is she likes eating dirt too much.

  16. loobylu@plinth.com says:

    So cubby is a playhouse?
    How about this for a cubby?
    http://www.wizkidsgames.com/mwdarkage/mw_article.asp?cid=36984&frame=news

  17. I just realized something: I already live in a cubby house! I checked, and my ceilings are just under 8 feet high. I think most of us in NYC live in cubbies, actually…

  18. mariabinns@hotmail.com says:

    yeah I didnt really take the cubby houses seriously! when i said i spent a fortune on my daughters i was talking $200 which is a ruddy fortune to me.Which child has a cubby like those ones? I dont know any thank God.
    Long live tree houses I reckon. I lived in a share house a few year’s ago and we used to have house meetings in the tree house out the back and smoke a bit of weed. Those were the days – teh before growing up and getting children days – ahhhh….
    Mia

  19. lol! no! I know your not goint to buy one of those! I’m sorry I didn’t make myself clear (I was at work give me a break). I’m saying she’ll have fun with the one you’ve put together. Like Emma said, with a place like that you can’t have any fun, you’d mess it up. With something home made you can acctually enjoy yourself. No, I was giving a cheers to you for having fun with playhouse, I didn’t think you’d spring for a mini manson.

  20. brooke@brookelyn.org says:

    Personally, I prefered my giant cardboard box with its uneven cutout windows and one door, and my hand full of crayola markers.

  21. so what was the terrible scene that unfolded in your friends “Play With Me” installation?

  22. rath_chandra@hotmail.com says:

    Sounds like something out of The Nanny Diaries! (I’m thinking of the poor child who had to hang his xmas snowman in the wardrobe.) I was a kitchen-chair-and-sheet girl too – it means you can renovate once a week.

  23. indigo@fl.net.au says:

    Mia, about the fold-out foam seats – all you have to do is take off the cover, unpick it (slow but easy) and then cut out the same shape in fabric of your choice and sew it up (or get someone handy with a machine to do it for you). Much classier.

  24. I’m doing post grad work at Tas Uni on cubby houses, great sight here, love to see an image.

  25. Oh, I forget to mention treated pine is extreamly toxic, the EU is fazing it out and we should do the same, don’t suck it whatever you do. cheers, ben