As promised, the reason I was swamped last week…..
We’ve been thinking on getting the kids a new swing set for awhile now. We’ve always admired the wood ones Costco sells every spring and probably would have picked one up a few years back but it really wasn’t in the budget and the neighbor offered us their old metal one for free. This year it became apparent that the metal swingset was about at it’s end. The thing sways side-to-side whenever the kids are on it causing them to crash into each other and no amount of bolt tightening solves the problem.
So we priced out the Costco set and started saving our nickels. Of course once we had the appropriate amount of funds set aside Costco had sold out of said swingset for the year. I scoured the internet looking for other retailers of the brand and found none so I contacted the company directly. Turns out there are no other retailers in the US, but they do have a sister company that sells comparable wood sets through Toys-R-Us.
Sweet!
When I looked into it I found a virtually identical set to what we’d seen at Costco, plus it had an additional Monkey bar feature. Best part was that it was also on sale for 25% off (Memorial Day blowout)
Double Sweet!!
SOLD!
We ordered it online and had it shipped to the nearest store (Meridian on the far side of Boise about 2.5 hrs from home) since that option is free and it would cost an additional $275 bucks, voiding my sale savings, to ship it directly to the house. Of course shipping to store means they can take their sweet time about it. We were hoping (fingers crossed) that it would only take a week to ship (since it left the warehouse about 3 hrs after I place my order) and we’d get it in time to build the weekend before our planned camping trip.
Luck was not on our side and it didn’t arrive at the store until late Saturday of the weekend we wanted to build so, given their short Sunday hours, pick-up was not an option until Monday. Of that week happened to be one where Kevin was slammed at work (in fact he was gone for two nights) so it came down to two options. 1) Swingset construction waits another full week with kids constantly asking when they can play on their new swingset or 2) I build most of it myself and have Kevin help with the heavy lifting we he gets back on Thursday.
Since the kids woke up Tuesday morning and their first words were, “Can we build the swingset” I went with option 2. I mean my Dad taught me how to wield a drill, use a level, and operate a socket wrench. With those skills and the ability to read instructions it should be no problem right??
Honestly, it really wasn’t a problem. Just time consuming (there are TONS of pieces and 40 some odd steps to these things). Especially when you are also trying to entertain two kids. I even managed to water seal the whole thing – I mean if I’m going to do this I should do it right…right? As I went along building pieces it eventually came to me that I probably could do the whole thing on my own and save Kevin from having to do it Thursday night.
The trickiest part was the roof. Thankfully we have a helpful, albeit slightly odd, neighbor who said to just holler when I was ready. We got it right up on top with no problem. I don’t completely trust my skills and was worried we’d get it up there to find it or the main structure weren’t square and it would sit right. Thankfully it fit perfectly thought I still might add a couple more brackets to anchor it better since we get some strong wind ‘round these parts.
Needless to say when Kevin got home Thursday night the set was done. It was totally worth to see him stand there saying “It’s done??.. I don’t have to do anything?” Well, that and the fact the kids are totally in love with…..
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