Sunday, March 31, 2013

Pirate Ship: Part 1

For Christmas, Marin's baptism, and Mallory's birthday we requested, as gifts, donations to our swing set fund. Marin didn't need any toys, since we have plenty infant toys from Mallory. And even with donations, Mallory still got toys at Christmas...everyone wanted her to have something to open.

Since Thanksgiving, I have wanted to build this Pirate Ship playhouse with attached swings that I found here. Here is a picture from their website:

John thought I was crazy. Being a girl, and having two girls, I know that when I was younger my sisters and I played on our swingset with clubhouse all the time...especially the clubhouse part. This ship would be an awesome clubhouse for our kids who live on 4.5 acres, with no other kids around. After looking around the site, we thought his projected cost was totally doable, but maybe unrealistic - wood is expensive! Still, we asked for donations knowing that if we didn't build the ship, the girls would still be getting a swing set of some sort.

Luckily, we got a great amount of donations, and Menards was having its 11% off everything sale this week! So, we purchased the ship plans online, printed out the materials list, and off to the store we went! We knew that even if our total was over this guy's estimate, we were still going to build it, thanks to the amazing contributions from our friends and family.

We got to the register and checked out. After a few calculations, taking out the other stuff we bought and the rebates (which we will use on the swings and slide), we were surprisingly almost exactly at his lumber/screws and nails estimate!

John, his parents, and his brother, made three trips to Menards on Friday to collect all the wood we purchased. It was a lot! But we were able to save even MORE money because when they went out to the lumber yard, John noticed that the price listed outside was cheaper than the price we paid on most of the lumber we purchased - so he "wheeled and dealed" as he puts it, and we got the cheaper price adjustment. Fantastic!

We headed outside to see trip #2 being unloaded:
Unloading trip #2



Today, we headed outside to map out where we wanted the ship to go.
Daddy laying out the footprint of the ship - it's 4 feet smaller than the longest part of the ship when built, so we had to make sure everything would be in the right place one we add the arm off the back for the swings. We have a bumpy/hilly  lot so we needed everything on flat land. 

Mallory sitting on the tractor...ready to play!

It was pretty windy out there today! Marin kept trying to lick the air!

So...hopefully we will be able to make some progress on it this week! More updates to come!


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2 comments:

  1. I can't wait to see the end results. Pirates are so fun. I always wanted our son to be a pirate for Halloween but he never chose that. I would have loved this play set, too!

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