Building our own swing set

And so it was that the week after Earth Day, and after the kids spent a week watching The Lorax, we spent a weekend cutting down the Tree of Paradise in the northwest corner of our yard. Irony.

I never really liked that tree, and when I'd rather use my yard space to plant edible food for my family, the amount of saplings that tree dropped made it impossible to use the surrounding space as long as the tree remained standing. And after Shad spent some time staring at the tree, pondering upon it, he concluded that we could easily use it to build the tower portion of the swing set we've long been planning to build for our kids. So the cutters and saw came out. Shad did the major cutting, I did the minor cutting once the branches were on the ground, and Tom and Katie, and sort of Dancy, helped haul the little sticks to the truck bed.

The following day, Shad and his friend Tim began construction.

We've worked on it steadily, day by day as we have time and it's not raining.

No blueprints, just making it up as we go, making it what we want it to be.

 The slide was purchased a couple years ago at a garage sale for $5, and the ladder had been lying around in our garage for who knows how long. Shad reinforced the sides with some of the leftover lumber we purchased.

We bought a camo tarp on ebay and used zip ties to secure it. The steering wheels and periscope were scavenged on a Trash-Swap Weekend.

The pirate flag (from Paul Jones) now has an appropriate use, and really completes the tower portion of the swing set. 

We would have built the swing portion last weekend, but when we went to buy a 4 by 6, both hardware stores told us they don't carry that piece of lumber. And they didn't offer to order it in, either.