Fun forts

Trevor Childears is the king of the world. At least, that’s the image that comes to mind when the 6-year-old from Mead climbs atop a wooden pirate ship in his backyard, perches himself on the bow and stretches his arms out wide.

“It’s best that Mom doesn’t know everything,” Trevor’s mother, Amy Love says, as she watches her youngest son dangle his feet at least 10 feet above the ground.

Love and her husband, Chad Childears, and two other family members assembled the ship — a backyard play structure meant to be climbed on by young pirates like Trevor — one day last summer, after its parts were delivered to their driveway via semi-truck. The couple had ordered it from a Lancaster County, Pa., company called Home Place Structures, which sells Amish-made playhouses, forts and other big backyard toys.

“We wanted something different,” Love says.

Different is what they got. Although it has some typical play structure parts – a trapeze bar, swing and climbing wall among them – there likely aren’t many ships like it marooned in other Spokane area backyards.

Its hull is a commanding 14 feet wide by 8 feet long. A firehouse pole leads from the top of the ship to a private hideaway below, in what would be a regular ship’s cargo space. And a plank goes from the ground, where the family dropped sand to drive home the pirate-ship theme, to the ship’s deck.

“It’s pretty great,” Trevor says with a grin.

Playhouses, tree forts and swing sets are fixtures in many American backyards. For decades, parents have built play structures for their children, providing retreats where muscles can grow and young imaginations can wander, as well as providing moms and dads temporary breaks from their charges.

Today, ready-made kits and companies willing to install them make it easier than ever to erect play structures — although perhaps they’re pricier than ever, too. Some families still opt to build the structures from scratch.

Count John and Wendy Whitmer, of Suncrest, among them.

John Whitmer built a log cabin on stilts for their children, Ethan, 7, and Kathryn, 5, in 2005. The only components the children requested were a slide and a swing, so he worked them into the design.

As a teenager, Whitmer helped his father build a standard-sized log cabin for their family, and as a young man he built log cabins professionally. He works as an astronomy instructor at Spokane Falls Community College now, but Whitmer says he can’t kick his occasional urge to create something with his hands.

Whitmer used dead larch trees from his parents’ property to build the log cabin. It was done in a “scribe” style, meaning no “chinking,” or mortar, was used to seal the stacked logs to one another.

“Working with small logs is challenging,” he says. “There’s not as much mass, so they don’t settle well.”

His advice for other parents considering building a custom playhouse for their kids:

“Get a kit,” he says, laughing.

Marilyn Blossom treasures the one-of-a-kind play structure her father built for her in 1937, when she was 5.

The main body of the playhouse was an old car her father found at the dump, gutted and set into the ground. He built a steep slide made of metal and wood and a wading pool nearby.

“It was a time when you scrounged things up because no one had any money,” Blossom says. “He always had his eye out for something.”

The structure was a hit among children in their Spokane Valley neighborhood, which sat about where the Lowe’s home improvement store on East Sprague Avenue is located now. It was featured in the Spokane Daily Chronicle after one of the family’s goats took a swim in the pool during Blossom’s birthday party.

“That was all there was to do,” Blossom says. “We never went anywhere in the car. … You stayed home, and on Sunday it was a big thing to drive out to Dishman and get an ice cream at the creamery.”

Blossom wishes more children had outdoor play structures today, and says she reaped the benefits of growing up in an era when you made things by hand, whether it was a funky playhouse or a heartfelt Valentine.

“There was no TV to tell me what was wrong or what wasn’t,” she says. “You just did what your mother did.”

Spokane businessman Colin Taylor is putting more playhouses into backyards one family at a time. He builds them through his company 4 Cs Development and sells them online at www.craigslist.org.

Taylor got his start two years ago, when he made one for his daughters using leftover materials from a construction project. This summer he expects to sell about a dozen custom-built playhouses, priced from about $500 to $1,700.

Unlike some toys, which seem to be forgotten soon after they’re purchased, parents say play structures hold children’s interest for a long time.

Wendy Whitmer says her children play in their log cabin often, especially when friends are visiting.

“It keeps them from wandering” away from the house, she says.

It also offers her a break when she needs to get some work done.

“Sometimes Mom makes you eat lunch in there. I mean, sometimes you get to eat lunch in there,” John Whitmer says to the children.

The Whitmers say they expect the children will continue using the cabin as they grow older, perhaps as a retreat from Mom and Dad when they’re teenagers.

“Or we will” use it as a retreat when they’re teenagers, Wendy Whitmer jokes.

Amy Love says Trevor and his older brother, Evan, also spend a lot of time in their Mead pirate ship, including sleeping inside it on the night it was built. They even used it during the winter, treating the plank as a slide on snowy days.

The only drawback will be how to set sail, should the family ever choose to sell their home.

“We’d need a barge to move it,” Childears says.