I don't know about you guys, but with not being able to go anywhere or do anything, we're saving a ton of money haha. As such, we've been tackling some projects that we've been ta;ling about for a while. Here's the latest thing that I'm almost finished with. We installed a zip line 10' up in this tree for the kids and needed to build a platform around it. The only thing that's left are a few plastic add-ons that are still in the mail and I need to find a slide that attaches to a 6' deck height and doesn't cost $1,000. I'd say we didn't do too bad for a stay at home mom and a work-from-home IT guy haha. I'm certainly no carpenter, so I'm not sure if I built it correctly haha. I overbuilt it quite a bit so it's ridiculously sturdy, even with me, the wife and all 3 kids on top, it doesn't sway or have any kind of movement. What are you guys working on with all this extra free time?
Thanks! At our old house, we bought one of those "pre-fab" play sets that you just put together with their instructions. During assembly I noticed the wood was extremely light for its size (not dense material) and stuff warped relatively quickly, and with just the kids on it everything kind of wobbled. We spent probably around $900 on it and we were completely unimpressed. We're maybe $800-$1,000 into this project and it'll have LED solar lights capping off each 4x4 post once they show up in the mail. I built a matching 4'x4' landing platform on the other end of the zip line and it'll last WAY longer than the "assembly required" kits. The only snag right now is the slide. The cheapest we can find for a 6' deck height is around $600 and it's just a plain slide. For $750ish we can get a super cool spiral slide, but it's only for a 7' deck height. So I'm thinking about just creating a raised portion to fit the spiral slide.
It’s storm season, so if you have Facebook watch there for slides for sale. We bought a really nice fort for the kids for $100 because a storm had knocked it over. Fixed a few boards and a new coat of stain and it was good except for the slide, which had been damaged too badly. Ended up finding one on FB pretty cheap. In fact we saw one the other day for like $25 and sent a message but never got a response, so it must have already been sold. Was like a 9’ long one also like we have. You can find them if you are patient.
Also contact local schools. Many of them revamp their playgrounds every few years and end up giving or throwing stuff away.
My main project thus far has been cleaning up mice feces and urine in my partially finished basement. It was WAY worse than I thought. I let it go way too long. Luckily they’ve seemed to be content to the basement so at least it’s not in our living space. I put down about 15 poison boxes (the kind that kill them and shrivel them up so they don’t stink). I’m gonna let them get into them for another week (it’s been one week already), then I’m gonna thoroughly clean and disinfect the hard surfaces and steam clean the carpet and furniture. I did clean out my corner and ended up building myself an overbuilt workbench that will double as a shelter for the kids in the event of a tornado. I ended up hooking up an old receiver and a pair of Bose bookshelf speakers sitting around (until i finish a wall in the basement that they will mount to) so that I have some music while I tinker/sharpen.
I hung a climbing rope in the back yard because I like using it to workout. The neighbor kids wanted to play on it so my wife said I might have to only put it up when I'm using it. Then the neighbor kids' (hot) mom wanted to play on it and now I don't think I'm allowed to have a climbing rope in the back yard anymore...
@C99c you know what’s better then reading post about you talking about your neighbor cloning this rope ...you posting pictures of it happening...
I'd rather have evidence of crimes by the Clinton on my phone than pics of the neighbor on the rope. Fortunately, I have neither.
