New Playset

Do you like puzzels? Then I have to tell you about a couple projects we put together last weekend. The first one was a little cottage playhouse, which my mom and I agree was probably more for us than the kids! However last Saturday Morgan's friend from daycare was over for the afternoon to play and visit, they had so much fun playing with that while the rest of us worked on the swingset. After my dad and I finished assembling the cottage, it was time to go to work on the "big" project....the long awaited swingset! Kyle's parents had come up for the weekend to see the girls and willingly participated in putting this "adult size puzzel together! So, Jim, Cindy and my dad and I worked on the swing set, while my mom "managed" the kids - which is a whole different story for later! God bless my mother!!!
Now I like this kind of thing and find immense pleasure and joy in doing things like this. I guess because I love to work with my hands and really find it to be my "thing" for lack of a better word. I also enjoy learning how to use different tools. The swingset I had got from Home Depot - one of those do it your self guys. We had one major issue to contend with...a gradually slopping surface! So leveling the thing was our biggest issue, the other was actually putting the thing together the correct way the FIRST time. We found ourselves going back and redoing things at least a few times! There has to be nothing more frustrating than this. The entire project claims to take 3-6 hours. In fact, the box says build and play in one day! Well, not exactly...we started about 2 pm and didn't finish getting the "bones" of the swingset together until 10 pm. Getting just that finished was my primary goal, because I knew I could to the rest later on my own. We ended up leveling the swing set with some brick pavers (on two sides) and shims (on one of those sides). Then the A frame of it was supposed to take 4x4x8's and I thought that if we got 4x4x10's we could measure the difference in the slope of the ground in relationship to where the box part of the swing was to where the A frame would sit. We figured 16" need to come off, but I decided only to do 15" instead to leave us a little bit of wiggle room. We put that thing up and the bubble of the level was almost right exactly in the middle - had we taken more off, it would have been further off. So here is the finished project and some pics from today of us having fun!