CALGARY—Inside a warehouse in Lethbridge, Tyson Leavitt’s latest creation is starting to take shape: part castle, part English townhouse, it includes swings, slides, a zip line strung from a tower, and a working fireplace.
This is no ordinary playhouse, to put it mildly. It’s a 400-square-foot Harry Potter-themed creation that took Leavitt two months to build, and is now ready to be shipped to its new owners in Ottawa.
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Leavitt is behind Charmed Playhouses, a company based in Lethbridge, a couple hours of south of Calgary. Having designed playhouses worth as much as $200,000 for the likes of NBA star Steph Curry, actor Ali Landry, and former NHLer Theoren Fleury, the four-year-old company is increasingly on the map for building structures that are beyond most kids’ wildest imagination.
“We’re blazing a new industry that nobody’s really doing. If they want to spend (money) on our playhouse or if they want to go buy a $100,000 boat, it’s really just about what people want to spend their money on,” Leavitt said.
He went out on a limb four year ago when someone asked him to build an extravagant Rapunzel-themed treehouse for their children.
The business was new to Leavitt, who owned a landscape company at the time. But he showed up at his local home and garden show with a treehouse he’d built for his kids, prompting the request from the potential client.
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The catch? Since Leavitt was a novice builder, the would-be client wouldn’t commit to buying the treehouse in the end.
Months later, Leavitt’s client was thrilled enough with what he’d created to buy a second playset. It was enough for Leavitt to launch the business, which has grown since then to a point where Charmed Playhouses is shipping products to clients across Canada and the United States.
“It’s the inner child in me, I love doing things like this. It’s fun and I can tap into my imagination,” Leavitt said.
Building playsets worth hundreds of thousands of dollars isn’t the only thing Leavitt’s company does. Charmed Playhouses also offers its work to families through the Make-A-Wish Foundation, and built a playhouse for a pediatric occupational therapy non-profit in Edmonton called Over the Rainbow.
The therapeutic playhouse turned a garage into what looked like a magical forest, with climbing walls, balance beams, and swings, so the children could rehabilitate their muscles in imaginative surroundings.
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“All of our clients are really rewarding. Whether they’re the top 1 per cent or whether it’s Make-A-Wish, kids are kids,” Leavitt said.
“It’s always great to do these projects for everybody. We love working with Make-A-Wish because, obviously, those kids have been through so much. And it’s always rewarding to not only bring a smile to the kid’s face, but to the parent’s face. It brings a little hope to them.”
Andrew Jeffrey is a reporter/photographer for Star Calgary. Follow him on Twitter: @andrew_jeffrey