As I sit here and type this in what feels like a construction site... Concrete floors beneath me, inches of dust layered on inches of dust {probably another reason why I can't rid this cold}, and every tool known to man everywhere I turn. I thought I should go ahead and start sharing some of the projects we have completed thus far.
First up on our Project To-Do List was the Backyard and creating a play space for the kiddos. We are on just over half an acre with both a beautifully sized front yard and backyard but to us, the back was unlivable and something we wanted to tackle first. We consider ourselves backyard people and truly enjoy spending our time sitting out back letting the kids play but this was something we were unable to do as the yard had not been maintained previously and needed a lot of TLC. We have a beautiful Live Oak in the center of our backyard that no grass grew around and would turn into a dirty mud pit which I hated. We decided to incorporate the Live Oak into maybe a playground for the kids with building a tree fort down the road for them which is how this project unfolded. So alas, a playground became our very first home project!
Steven and I both only wanted an all cedar set and ended up pulling the trigger when we saw the company having a 4th of July Sale over the Summer. Everything got delivered and our backyard plans were approved through our HOA and Steven was ready to build {or not sure what he had gotten himself into}! Seriously if you could have seen just how many boxes there were and how many pieces of cedar in each box. Pure Craziness!
Thankfully my husband has an Engineering background and is really good at this stuff. Through his high demanding job and working full days he would come home and get to work outside and building the swing set. The swing set literally had 10,000 parts as nothing was preassembled and it had very little predrilled spots either.
It ended up being a nice little weekend project and he even had a little help from some little hands from time to time!
After the swing set was built we added a timber "flower bed" around the perimeter so we could mulch the entire area in so that it would look and feel like a playground. He had to remove the existing sod, align & nail the timbers into place, and rolled out the biodegradable weed mat.
The finishing touch was a truck full of cedar wood chips that were delivered to fill in the entire area!
I would say we had two happy kiddos when they could come outside and play!
The playground has already been well loved on and the kids have played on it every single day the past 3 months it has been built! When I look outside now I can't even imagine the backyard without it. It truly was the perfect addition!
