Through mom's guilt for feeding William peanut butter Thursday and sending him to the hospital, she went out Friday and bought a swingset. She told me about it and said I can pick it up Friday night (my birthday) or Saturday. Saturday it was. I picked up this swingset/playset in my in-laws pick up truck and brought it home. I opened one of the 4 boxes to get out the instructions. There are literally a million parts to this monster and of course no two pieces are the same. It's going to take me a week just to find and label all of the parts so we don't get the pieces mixed up. I say "we" since I am going to need my father in law for sure to put this thing together since he has alot more experience building stuff than I do. I have put alot of stuff together in my day, but nothing that took 96 steps with a manual that looks just short of "war and peace". It says that it should take 2 skilled people around 16 hours to assemble, so I guess that means it will take my father in law and I about a month with my help.
The other fun part is where to put this thing in our backyard, because once you put this thing together, it's going to stay where ever it is assembled. Not like the old days of the metal ones that you just picked up and move to another part of the yard so the area under the swings don't get worn out. For "safety" reasons they say you have to have a 6 foot barrier around the swing, which makes the footprint of this thing 30' x 35' which is basically half the backyard (I think I will be fudging on this for sure). They also recommend a "soft" area under the playset which includes 12 inches of mulch. Excuse me? It will take 5 dump trucks to fill a 30'x35' area 12 inches thick. We didn't have a "safety" barrier or a "soft" area when we were kids. Our "soft" area was if dad didn't cut the grass for a couple of days, so needless to say there will be some fudging on the footprint and ground cover. I am not saying I want my kids to get hurt, but come on, that just seems a bit extreme to me. Of course Jenny might veto me on these things. So stay tuned for me bitching about this in the upcoming weeks/months.
2 comments:
You're right. Only at school did they have ground under equipment and it was gravel. While spreading the energy nicely, it welted you, scratched you sometimes and nicely got into cuts. Mulch might splinter. Dirt, on the other hand was manly. If you fell in dirt, it hurt, but you got over it. Spilling headfirst into gravel -- rethink your planning.
I know that I helped my brother-in-law and sister with theirs, and it was the cedar wood, plastic, metal 18th century fort style mosnter.
My brother-in-law did the drigging beforehand ... about 12-18" down and the legs were placed. The cement went in and it was stable and incredibly challlenging to move when they left that house.
Good luck! War and Peace -- quite amusing!
Friends of ours just bought one that sounds similar to yours. Took the guy about two days--that's "24 hours" spread over time--to put the thing together (by himself). He decided not to do the mulch moat, too. That's a bit extreme.
Post a Comment