Apr 20, 10 | Posted by: David Melbye, M.D.

Getting ready for summer

When we bought our house there was an old play set in the backyard that was not in the best condition.  My wife wanted to get a new one last summer, but we held off and used some extra wood to brace it.  It took a pretty good beating last winter, and there was no way it was going to make it through this summer.  We were thinking about getting a rainbow system but I got “sticker shock” and decided I could build one myself.  We went to Menard’s and bought a build-it-yourself set that was “easiest and fastest to build”.  I should have known by the picture of the circular saw on the box that it really wasn’t going to be that easy.

The directions said it would take 15-18 hours to assemble so we sent our kids to Grandma’s house for the weekend and went to work.  We spent about 15 hours on it that weekend and only had the shell of the tower assembled.  The cutting of the wood alone took us 5 hours.  I joked “only 3 hours left” as my wife begged me to let her ask for help from her Dad.  I insisted that I wanted to do it without help, so we could tell the kids we built it for them ourselves.  She just wanted it done.  After multiple weeknights and another full weekend of work, it is finally done.  To be perfectly honest we did get some help lifting the tower from a friend and a big assist from another friend to attach the swing set frame to the tower.  All totaled we spent about 36 hours on our 15-18 hour project.  We broke a tape measure and burned out a drill.   Somehow the end of my cordless drill driver broke off too; that was the one that hurt the most.

So we now have a play set with 3 swings, a set of rings, a glider, 2 slides and a rock-wall in our backyard.  I even got the industrial strength swings and swing hangers so I can use it too.  I figure after that much work I should at least get to swing.  I’m still sore and recovering from a couple of minor injuries, but I’m glad we did it…I think.  For those of you who had someone build your swing set for you all I can say is, I totally get it.

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