Swing Swing Swing

I’m a homeowner now. Buying a house brings many responsibilities. I have to mow the lawn, paint the walls, and complain about my property taxes being too high. I’m also a father, which brings a separate set of responsibilities. I have to feed my children, clothe my children, and complaining about the money spent on food and clothing.

As a home owning father, I have a new set of responsibilities. I know I have to provide a safe environment for my children to enjoy on my property. I think I’m also supposed to start complaining about the schools failing to educate my children, but I’ll wait until my children start using them before doing that.

We used yesterday to create this fun environment for the kids. The safety is questionable, but it should at least be fun.

Last fall, we knew we’d move into a house in the spring. We didn’t know where we would move, but we assumed that our new house wouldn’t have a swing set for the kids to enjoy. Chances are we’d buy a house form an empty nester with a backyard that hadn’t seen a swing set in a decade, or at least a backyard with a swing set that hadn’t been maintained in a decade. With this in mind, we swooped into the area big box stores, and picked out a swing set that the store was desperate to unload. We bought it for a third of its original price, and stored it behind our apartment until we had a garage to fill.

I knew I needed something easy to assemble. I’m not a handy guy, and have only slightly more experience with tools than any of my children.* I saw those kits in the home improvement stores that include a few pieces of plastic, some fasteners, and no lumber. They still come in a giant cardboard box, presumably to make room for the instructions. Those were too complicated for me, but I still wanted something wooden, something that would look nice for any passersby who might look over our six-foot privacy fence into our backyard.

The set I picked out included everything we needed to assemble it. It had all the plastic, all the hardware,** and all the lumber. Most importantly, the lumber was precut, presealed, and (mostly) predrilled. I just had to unpack it and erect it in probably an afternoon.

When I saw the directions said the build time would take two adults “six to twelve hours,” I called my dad. He’s been through this before, he should know what he’s doing, so maybe we could set this up closer to the six hour mark. We arranged for my parents to visit this weekend.

When my parents arrived, my mom took the kids, and I took my dad to work. It took a couple hours to erect something that resembled a play set, and even when we did, we had a problem.


That top beam is supposed to be level. My dad is posing with it while I scour the instructions for hints.



After a couple hard shoves to the frame, we got it close enough.



A couple more hours later, we had a swing set. The frame wasn’t bolted together yet thanks to a missing washer, and we hadn’t bolted the slide down yet, but that didn’t stop the kids from climbing on it. Abbie knew what it was as soon as she woke from her nap, and tried swinging, hence why the swings are flipped on top of the frame in this picture. She then went for the slide, which we quickly bolted into place.



There’s the finished product, complete with slide, climbing wall, swings, and apparently a dog. It’s even on a sandlot to cushion the kids when they fall, because the properly mowed lawn that I’m sure to keep won’t be soft enough to keep them safe when somebody gets pushed off the slide.

* Or slightly less experience with tools than my children if you count the time they spend with their Learning Tool Bench.
** Except for one washer apparently. Jerks.