When I first started trying to sketch my house, I had a little bit of a learning curve, figuring out where to find each tool, changing textures, and adding components, like the tree. The hardest part was designing the house without a mouse; the walls and ceiling were not completely straight the first time around. Now, I feel like I got the hang of it and was able to have some fun designing the drawing. Even though the home was not perfect, it resembles pretty well the real building. The thing that bothered me when I was done with the sketch was the lines in the ceiling. I wish I had figured out the push function first, rather than doing every individual house wall – that way, it could have been a cub.
SketchUp is a powerful tool and can be used in several scenarios – from learning to make 3D models to giving light to historical sites.
Front view 
Side view 
Top view 
Side view
Luisa, I definitely agree with what you are saying about SketchUp having a learning curve. I struggled greatly with the dog house tutorial, but I finally figured out some of the basic tools like pan, orbit, and zoom. This allowed me to progress to the actual house building which was significantly easier. I actually tried adding a tree to my own house, but I was unable to do this. The rectangle tool was one of the best tools that I figured out how to use as it allowed me to build the walls and fences of my house quickly.