Build or buy: kids playset edition

When I was a kid, I had a junky little metal swingset that's only real purpose was making mowing the grass more difficult and keeping me up to date on tetanus. I have the space for something much nicer for my daughter, but holy crap do these get expensive quick.

Ive seen a few now on craigslist that I've been to slow to respond to or didn't have a way to move them going for $200 to free though, which gave me some hope.

I've also been seeing hardware sets. Frame braces, swing holders, climbing groups, all the fun stuff.

Now, $700 seems to be entry level pricing for a basic kit, 2 swings, slide, climbing wall, sandbox, little play deck.

Poking around on Amazon though, I could do the slide, swing holders and swings for under $200, just leaving me with needing to buy lumber and spend a weekend putting it together. This same "lumberless" kit is almost $400 from any stores.

So it would make sense financially just to build my own right?

Has anyone here ventured into this territory?

I'm not planning on even getting started this year(i really do have a backlog of warm weather projects right now), but I would like to have something together by her 3rd birthday next June. I know a lot of the kits go on clearance in the fall so I'll be looking at them too, but thinking it would be a good use of my new tools just to build one from scratch.

I'm thinking 2 regular swings, a tire swing, and a slide, sand box, platform, and climbing wall contraption.

So has anyone entered this particular rabbit hole before? Should I just bite the bullet and spend more than I have on my last 2 cars on something fancy or just spend a weekend or two playing with a saw and drill?

I got the hardware kit and built my daughters playset. Extra set of hands helps a lot. Think i have 500 total in hers, and we've had it 7 years now.

I went with the free option that had been toppled in a windstorm. My property at the time was wooded and sloped so I had to build a custom play area anyway and the free stuff basically gave me a starting place for the hardware.

Picture from this winter, the ex has essentially abandoned the property so it's fallen into disrepair

Years ago, I picked up a pretty nice kit from one of the wholesale clubs. I think it was like $900 from BJ's. Playhouse, swings, slide, picnic table, climbing wall. It took my dad and I all weekend to put the thing together. We must have driven over 1,000 screws. Some of the thinner boards had a tendency to split, and the roof was stapled together, which necessitated repairs a few year down the road, but I'd say it held up fairly well. The nice thing is that everything was in the box. You could certainly cut your own pieces from lumber, but it would add significantly to the build time.

You can find completed sets on Craigslist for like $250 that you need to take apart/transport. There probably isn't a lot of demand for them and people just want them out of their yard. Offer $150, go get it, and maybe replace a few wooden parts if necessary?

Building it myself, I can do it in stages and go to the lumber yard in the miata. Getting someone's free one, I need to rent a Uhaul or pickup truck. That's what's been stopping me from grabbing free ones I've seen already. That and needing to take it apart, haul it, then rebuild it. And also during the week and most weekends, I have trouble getting help. A small circle of friends is good for some things but not others.

Seeing basic plastic slides selling for $100 plus though, it may payoff to strip an older free one or put some adds up looking for one.

RevRico wrote: Seeing basic plastic slides selling for $100 plus though, it may payoff to strip an older free one or put some adds up looking for one.

I have one in my backyard that you can have. It's in good shape. Seriously. Located just east of Richmond, VA. I figured somebody might have a use for it when I dismantled the playset. It's been behind the garage for over a year. Green wavy slide, just the slide. Made to attach to a platform maybe 5 feet above the ground? Constructed of high-quality Canadian plastic, IIRC.

I got a free one from CL. Had to replace a few of the bolts, but otherwise its fine. Its moistly cedar, which I don't think you will be able to buy in your lumber budget. Minimal disassembly was required with a car trailer.

Find a free one on Craigslist.

Go there, disassemble it.

Leave it there disassembled, go to Home Depot and rent a truck for $20 for 75 minutes. Go load it up, take it home, unload it, return the truck.

Go home and assemble.

1988RedT2 wrote:

RevRico wrote: Seeing basic plastic slides selling for $100 plus though, it may payoff to strip an older free one or put some adds up looking for one.

I have one in my backyard that you can have. It's in good shape. Seriously. Located just east of Richmond, VA. I figured somebody might have a use for it when I dismantled the playset. It's been behind the garage for over a year. Green wavy slide, just the slide. Made to attach to a platform maybe 5 feet above the ground? Constructed of high-quality Canadian plastic, IIRC.

Same offer in SW Michigan for you or any others. Fort/sandbox/swingset free. Home built out of wolmanized lumber, by myself and my dad, who over-engineers everything but builds it well.

(You provide stupid friends who owe you a favor and pickup truck)

I have a play set in the back yard where we have one commercial baby seat type swing and one piece-of-lumber swing, and a plastic slide my parents found somebody throwing out. The rest was built from lumber and chain. It came out really cheap, like maybe $100 at most, including the commercially made Little Tykes swing. It's not too hard to come up with something if you're good with a hammer.

i bought the $100 hardware/swings kit from home derp and bought the 4x4's for the frame. used a wider 4x for the top so we could go 3 wide, then built a little platform off the side and added a slide we picked up on garbage night. got a nice ladder on clearance and a round swing too that i added another 4x bolted to the main one and hung off one side beyond the A frame. it's a work in progress as i get deals on stuff.

We started with just a swing kit two years ago, and this past summer I built the playhouse part. I went for the DIY route, and I figure that I have about $7-800 wrapped up total by now, it would be a bit higher but I the slide was a grandparent birthday gift.

The swing set we started with was something like this. I overbuilt it (thicker/longer main beam, 10' uprights instead of the recommend 8, etc) so we could have 4 wide seating and it's tall and stable enough that my wife or I can swing with the kids.

The rest of the playhouse is some swing-n-slide ladder bars and grab handles, rock wall rocks from Amazon and plain lumber. The cool thing about doing it this way was that my then 3 and 6 year olds were heavily involved in making it. I'd guess they cut at least 50% of the boards and drove half of the screws (I had the 3 year old run a little drill bit and the 6 year old drive the screw), so they "own" it. Because I overbuilt it, we can have two or three adults jumping on the top platform safely, so I don't have to worry that the kids will wreck it.

I would recommend against hiring 3 & 6 year olds for your construction projects if you're on a tight deadline, though

I made my own. $800. The swings are rated at 300# so I can swing on them. I made it solid.

Every board had a router with a corner bit run along every edge - very tedious process.

mtn wrote: Find a free one on Craigslist. Go there, disassemble it. Leave it there disassembled, go to Home Depot and rent a truck for $20 for 75 minutes. Go load it up, take it home, unload it, return the truck. Go home and assemble.

^^^^ This

This was $500 combined with a bit of dumpster diving. Built with 30 year roof and all treated wood scavenged from Craigslist/seeing people replacing decks. 2 stories, bridge over the fence.

I built this one. It was a combination of my own design and some kit hardware.

We bought a prebuilt one 15 years ago which came in a few sections on a rollback and dinal assembly done onsite (top bar doe swings, monkey bars, ladder and swings.

If you can get the use of a rollback, you don't need to do full disassembly; you can keep main structural parts intact.

Mine is a combo play set/treehouse. It has been built in phases, but the total cost is well under $300. The swings are on 2x4s now because the kid weighs 30#, but they will go to 4x4s this summer.

You can see the color difference between the wood that's been out there 10+ years, and the new addition. Yes, the trapdoor is on gas struts.

The slide was the most expensive single piece, but Home Depot has all kinds of stuff.

The platform is in three, offset stages. Makes it fun to climb and wee little ones can only ever fall 3 feet.

I'm sure we will add more to it as he grows, I am thinking about a sun shade next.

I think you should think a bit further out of the box and also more long term.

Kids play with their imagination. So give them a nice high space to hangout with some koos features inside and let their imaginations run wild.

Some ropes, slides and poles to slide down that are just challenging enough to keep the parents out of their magic space and you are good to go.

From a long term standpoint, kids outgrow this stuff pretty quick, and you go from being the buyer to the seller. Would it not be great if you could combine your kids imediate need with a future need of your own?

So, what I propose is that you go buy a 4 post car hoist, your future challenge car, and some spare body parts to make the slide and weld it all up. ( You were planing on learning to weld in the future right?)

When the kids are done, you move the lot into the garage and you both get on with your lives.

Start with these brackets. They were, by far, the best that I was able to find. And build as much as you can out of cedar and it will outlast your kids.

http://www.backyardcity.com/Swing-Set-Accessories.htm

Brackets

Woody wrote: Start with these brackets. They were, by far, the best that I was able to find. And build as much as you can out of cedar and it will outlast your kids. http://www.backyardcity.com/Swing-Set-Accessories.htm Brackets

Yes, I found these on Amazon, and am definitely planning on basing the swing off of them. Compared to making a million cuts and ruining so much lumber making things even, the $50-75 for brackets is worth it.

Nohome, I do like that idea too. I also happen to have a spare challenge car that I was going to strip the body off of anyway. A hood and trunk would make some nice slides, covers, and boxes.

As a bonus, I was informed just yesterday that Dana has the slide from her playset when she was a kid, so free slide makes me happy.

A quick search for pressure treated pine on home depots website, which is not where I'll be buying the wood but a good estimator, puts me around $250. Way better than the $900 base play sets I've been seeing online.

I originally thought this was going to be an expensive endeavour and was going to put it off until next year. I'm now thinking we may see a build thread this summer once I make sure my other projects are funded. Which means sticky tires for the challenge car and hotel and gas money for the challenge itself.

What may be my biggest fight is how soggy my yard is 9 months out of the year. I may actually dig another French drain just where this is going to be since it seems we can't go a week without rain and I don't want it to sink in 5 years.

If you've spent any time pushing your kids on swings at the playground, I'm sure that you've already discovered that it's better to swing through a longer arc. There's a big difference between an eight foot high swing set and a ten footer.

Using the brackets above, I made the legs out of ten foot cedar 4"x4"s. I had to buy twelve footers and cut them down. The lawn was pretty close to flat, but not perfect. I figured out roughly where the legs would land and went out at night with a cheap laser level. I found the low spot and used a true ten footer there. The other three were an inch or two shorter, so the top beam is perfectly level.

We're supposed to be car guys, how has no one mentioned a tyre swing yet?

The reason to DIY is that you can make the swing part properly big. Swinging is much more fun when the swings are hung high. I think ours has 12 foot legs and a 14 foot cross piece holding four swings. It's been up a while.