Swingset Building Day 1

According to my dad, when you are figuring out how long a project will take, you figure out how long you think it should take, then double the number and go up a unit. For example, if you figure a project will take 1 hour, you should plan on it actually taking 2 days. For the swingset, I hoped it would take 1 weekend, so I was figuring it would actually take 2 weeks.

The building started out with looking over the free plans I had found online, and realizing there weren't any measurements for how to build it. The plans were part of a kit that comes with pre-drilled wood, so it was enough for them to say to attach B and C to A, because you just found the holes and fastened it. But without the pre-drilled holes the boys had to do a lot of guess work. We made the modifications we wanted and Josh and Dad went to HD to get a truck and all the lumber and hardware. Did you know that Memorial Day weekend is the busiest weekend for truck rentals? Neither did we. There weren't any at the closest HD, and only a 26 foot truck at the next closest one.

Three hours later, Jordan had met them there and they filled his truck full of our lumber and were headed back home. There was a handful of sizes of lumber that HD doesn't sell, so they were having to modify plans on the fly, and then get hardware to match the modifications. Unload the wood, quick lunch, and they were ready to get started! Of course it couldn't be smooth sailing from then on, though. It rained off and on, just enough that the tools needed to be brought inside for an hour and then brought all back outside again.

They got the bones for the play deck all put together on the patio, and went out to survey the yard (With Luca's help, of course). Where I wanted it needed so much work to level it out and make it a sturdy base for the swing set, so we shifted it forward. They brought it out, dug a little trench to level it out, and we called it good for the day.