So I built a swing set!!!

Over the past few months we have been trying to buy a sturdy wooden swing frame for our kids, mainly for Master 6 and Master 4 who have special therapy equipment that needs to be hung.

Whilst on the hunt I was astounded to find that unless you have very large pockets the options available would not be able to withstand the rough play from my boys, or my girls for that matter. So with that in mind I headed to my local hardware store with an idea in my head, I mean come on, building an A frame can't be that hard right!

Well, I was wrong! It is far more difficult than I first thought. The drama those five pieces of treated pine have caused me over the last two weeks, well let's just say there was more than one profanity directed towards both the tools and the person using them, myself.

I tackled this project with the bare minimum of preparation, I would suggest if you are going to attempt this at home you spend a little more time on plans and measurements than I did. When I say a bare minimum I mean like five minutes. Not my best idea!

So with my borrowed drill and my selection of nuts and bolts from the local Bunnings, I began to assemble my frame. I was lucky enough to have scored some swing hooks from my sister @krystle, who had some from a former swing set which saved me a few dollars, always a good thing.

Once I had all the swing hooks on the main beam I began to bolt together either side of the frame, this is where the fun begins. As it turns out when you buy a piece of 3 meter wood, it does not always measure exactly 3 meters. In fact all five bits of wood were slightly different lengths. You would think a couple of millimetres difference would make very little difference to the end product.

You would be wrong!!!

After the initial assembly, I had to pull the whole thing apart and correct this by hand sawing the ends of the other beams so that they all matched. It made a huge difference, unfortunately it took me a couple of days, 100mm in diameter, those beams seamed to take forever to cut through.

After I successfully assembled each side I thought getting the top beam in place would be a walk in the park, again, not so much lol. With the assistance of a deck chair I was able to get it into place and drill the holes required to put it all together. Once finished I discovered I had slightly moved one beam and had to readjust the others to the same angle to make it sturdy. For extra insurance I added a couple of support beams to the top of each side, just in case!

Last but most importantly I dug each leg into the ground, mainly for support but it was very much needed in our yard as the swing set sits on a slight hill. This was actually the hardest part. As I discovered about two minutes into my hole digging that our yard was full of rocks. Very large rocks. So this also took me the longest amount of time. But once finished, I am positive that my swing set will not move even if all six kids climbed on there at once.

The end result was fantastic, even if the journey to get there was a very bumpy one. I love it!

All in all, the frame costume less than $100 and I'm sure it will last a lot longer than the cheap metal frames that we could have brought instead. Was well worth the effort.

I wouldn't also like to thank my little helper Miss 1.

One apparently very handy mumofmany!