Playhouses Get Real Home Durability

Les Owens of LRO Residential has lent his building expertise to Dallas CASA’s Parade of Playhouses at NorthPark for 12 years and is at it again this year. 

LRO Residential builds homes in the Park Cities, Preston Hollow, Bluffview, and Devonshire.

Over the years, Owens has built a range of playhouses – from whimsical cottages to a fire station to a farmhouse with a copper silo. This year’s is a high-ceilinged cottage with a wooden roof.

“We frame the walls, and the roof, the rafters – everything just like you would a house,” Owens said. “So, it’s going to stand up over the test of time for sure. The front door, it’s … real wood, just like a mini wood front door would be, real windows provided by Anderson, wood floors just like we put in the house, sheetrock.”

Parade of Playhouses is the signature fundraising event for Dallas CASA, a nonprofit that advocates for abused and neglected children.

“Over the years, I’d seen it go into the mall,” Owens said of the event. “I always thought it was kind of neat, and when we had our first child … we signed up. We were able to participate in it and thought as long as we have kids, it’d be a good thing to do every year. (It’s an) easy way to give back that aligns with what we do.”


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Rachel Snyder

Rachel Snyder, former deputy editor at People Newspapers, joined the staff in 2019, returning to her native Dallas-Fort Worth after starting her career at community newspapers in Oklahoma. One of her stories won first place in its category in the Oklahoma Press Association’s Better Newspaper Contest in 2018. She’s a fan of puns and community journalism, not necessarily in that order.

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