Daddy, did you get me a swing set?
Lindsay loves swings and slides. For as long as she’s been here, we’ve had one little swing mounted under the deck and she has to swing in it at least once a day. Whenever we go to visit friends who have a full fledged swing set, she is all over it. So, it came as no surprise that when we saw a “build it yourself” swing set kit at Lowe’s, she asked me when we were going to get one.
Jenny and I tossed ideas around for a while. We looked at several swing sets of all types and sizes. In the meantime, Lindsay would ask me almost every day “Daddy, did you get me a swing set yet?” Eventually, I decided to get the very kit at Lowe’s that started it all because, well, I don’t spend enough money at Lowe’s already.
The kit is designed so that you can add on different things as you go. The main tower comes by itself, then there’s the swing bar, monkey bars, a tunnel, a climbing wall, two different sized slides, a picnic table, and so on. I decided to start with the tower, swing bar, small slide and climbing wall. I wasn’t planning to mulch the area around the set just yet. I figured I’d start with the grass and maybe go from there.
There were about nine million pieces that came with this rig. First things first: lay out all the pieces so that you know what is what.
Our back yard has a slight slope to it, so I knew from the beginning that getting it level was going to be tough. My friend Leslie brought his trusty water level over and once we had roughed out where the posts should go, we used that to dig down and get the frame in line. We decided that it would be better to let the back posts on the lowest part of the yard sit on the ground and dig in the front ones, as opposed to trying to raise the ground to meet the back ones. That choice would have some consequences later.
Once the frame was level and ready, it took a few days to get the tower section built. Leslie and another friend, Mark, helped me off and on. I laid the parts out in the yard on Friday, May 18 and was cleaning everything up on Thursday, May 24. With the exception of the weekend, I only worked on it at night because it was just too hot during the day, plus the back yard is in the shade after dinner.
I decided not to put the climbing wall up yet because it was Thursday night at 9pm before Memorial Day weekend when I got to that. I figured saving it for later would leave me something to add on to keep the “newness” of the swing set going. I also need to finish the sandbox, which is the section under the lower deck where you see rocks in the pictures.
My brother would be proud of my use of “scabrication”, as he calls it, in dealing with the slope of the yard. Choosing to set the front posts of the tower in the ground meant that anything on level with those posts and further up the slope would also have to be in the ground. I cut four inches off the bottom of the ladder legs so that I wouldn’t have to dig them in too far.
As for the swing bar truss, the leg closest to the house is a good eleven inches in the ground while the back one is resting on a nice rock. I built up some dirt around that back one and I plan to build it up further and place the sod on top so that it stays in place. The crossbar at the bottom also had to be raised up or else dug into the ground, so I just cut the length of it down, too.
The kit came with small posts that have a hook on top for anchoring the set into the ground. Each post has a circular blade made onto it so that it would act like a screw and grip into the ground as you turned it down. However, getting those suckers to drill down into solid Kentucky clay was nearly impossible. Instead, I picked up some sections of angle iron and sledge hammered them into place. I don’t think this set is gonna move much now, but I need to cover those things up somehow so they don’t poke out an eye.
In the end, Paige, David and Lindsay seem to like it. Yes, sweetie, I did get you a swing set. 
