Finishing Touches | Swingset with Fort

B and I got our FIRST design CLIENTS! (The pay was terrible, but they have great taste :) )

A couple years ago, the kids used Christmas money to purchase a used swingset/fort from a local family. We always had in mind to refresh it, but let’s face it, with a house that needs updated everything, the fort went to the bottom of the list.

Enter COVID 19. Extra time. The kids took the design lead, picking materials (mostly) from our stash: Fort, gray; rock wall, blue with black rocks; fort floors/swingset, stain. They’ve been begging for a floor to be installed in the bottom since day 1. We surprised them with pressure treated lumber several weeks into quarantine and they were thrilled (I love this about them) :D B and I worked for a few hours to cut and lay the new floor (which can’t be stained for about a year. Kids = bummed). 

The kids did a lot of the painting...I assisted them. 

B and I did all the staining using a dark stain we had picked for the deck at our old house...we never got to use it because we moved before the lumber was cured. (It would have looked fan-tas-tic with the brick though). The kids added a few finishing touches--a painted table from Grammy and Papa’s barn, a tiny skateboard, a painted cupboard, some throw pillows, and my personal favorite, a sign featuring “The Kids”. 

I purchased two shower curtains from Target then sewed them to fit the openings. The curtains are hung by wire and can be open or closed. Hooks connect to button holes (which I made myself. Ya’ll, I learned a new skill!) that keep them out of the way of play. 

The benches were repurposed from our old sandbox, which we turned into a raised garden. 

The turf (a BEAST) came from the Tabor/USD 410 football stadium last spring. We used a bump-with-the-truck method to get it unrolled, vacuumed up gallons and gallons of rubber to get it to where we could maneuver it (SO HEAVY!), and cut it to fit under the swings and the slide. 

And thanks to a couple families with extra muscle, we moved the swingset/fort to a new location because...ticks….shudder. ICK, ICK, ICK. 

Ticks aside, this was a fun family project and we love the transformation!