The Making of a Swing Set

So my girl ended up getting her 2nd birthday present from us a little early. We (and by "we" I mean Chad and my dad) built her a swing set last month. When I say that you probably have images of those swing sets that are sold in toy and home improvement stores that include swings, rings, bars, towers, slides and other playground-scale accessories and cost entirely too much money. Apparently that's what Amazon and every other retailer thinks you should mean when you search for "swing set kit" because that's pretty much all you can find.

So what does one do when they only want a swing set, as in a small wooden structure that just holds two swings? They call my dad.

So I called my dad. I explained what we wanted and he came up with a solution--order the swing set kit bracket set (which you can find online--check Amazon or any home improvement store like Lowe's) and then buy some pre-treated lumber and build it.

Several weekends ago he and Chad went out and bought all the wood and the concrete mix to use to secure it into the holes we (Chad) dug into the ground. Then on a Saturday afternoon they cut and assembled the frame and set it up--start to finish in about 4 hours.

I did not attempt to do a tutorial on this one, but I should have because I was looking for this very thing when we first got the idea to build a swing set. Spending thousands of dollars on something that rivals our city's playground was not something we were in the market for, but it seems like there's a "go big or go home" mentality out there about kid's swing sets...so finding something simple and small was a challenge. But if you put me in charge of making a tutorial on building a swing set we would likely have major issues on our hands since I cannot properly operate a drill, saw, or oftentimes a hammer.

I settled for pictures instead.

And that is my over-simplified version of the swing set building process :)

~Stacy