Universal Ramblings

It’s like something straight out of a Warner Brothers cartoon, but these Crooked Houses are the real deal! Angled walls, crooked windows and a twisted roof are responsible for their fun-loving appearance; there isn’t a square cut in the entire house. I think it’s great that they’ll even theme the home to suit your child; grown-ups will appreciate that it assembles in less than 30 minutes with two adults.

Each house stands approximately 4×6 feet and 8 feet tall, making them bigger than a traditional playhouse but smaller than a full-sized shed. They’re handmade using traditional 2×4 construction with secure joinery and a solid pressure-treated base foundation; in short, they’ll handle anything kids can throw at them (which is a lot!).

Kids Crooked House’s concept was so unique that Yahoo! chose them from 9,000 other small businesses to be the recipients for a $100,000 marketing prize.

About Kids Crooked House:

A small business founded in 2005 by partners Glen Halliday and Jeff Leighton, Kids Crooked House debuted its line of creative and high-end playhouses at this past summer’s Yarmouth Clam Festival, taking home the First Place Small Business and Directors Choice awards, and growing the company rapidly over the last six months.

“I was trying to find something cool for my kids,” said Halliday, who serves as the creative force behind the company and is a serial entrepreneur with a marketing/design firm and dog products company also to his credit. “I wanted a playhouse, but I didn’t want a box that I would end up putting my lawnmower in the next year. There just wasn’t anything out there that was both durable and affordable. So I thought I’d design something to get my kids away from the TV every once in a while.”

Halliday and Leighton soon decided that backyard prototype was attracting enough attention from fellow parents to warrant a business plan. Since then, the pair has developed multiple versions of the Kids Crooked House.

Crooked Houses in the News:

“Jon and Kate Gosselin’s disagreement about where on their property to place crooked houses for their twin 8-year-old girls and 5-year-old sextuplets may have been a sign of martial trouble. Around the same time as the kids’ playhouses where being constructed, the “Jon & Kate Plus 8″ couple filed for divorce.”