The Swing Mistake

We had a plan.

We were going to scour Craig’s List for a couple of cheap used swing sets and put them together for one giant fun land set! The price would have been a fraction the cost of something new that size and the girls would play themselves silly in our own yard.

We also looked for and found some additional slides.

The guy wanted $50 for each, but I got him down to $50 for both. In addition to forts and swings galore, there’d be extra slides too.

Then something came up that we didn’t expect.

A singular huge play set that was within our combined play set price range. We called the guy. Set up a time to come take it down and haul it home and it was ours.

Even with the help of an air compressor and the previous owner, dissassembly took 5 hours.

I took it all down in easily manageable chunks that would hopefully make reassembly quick and nearly painless.

Then Jen showed up with the Subaru and it took another 2 hours to pack it all in the truck, trailer and Subaru. Then it was the hour drive home.

At home it took around an hour to unload. Overall it was about a 10 hour day.

By Monday night we had most of it moved to the garage for cleaning and painting. The process was going to involve washing/brushing every piece, then painting two coats of paint/waterproofing stuff on it.

As most typical weeknights go (please see next post), we didnt’ get started until 9:30 pm. By 11 pm we had one and a half pieces cleaned.

This was going to take forever.

We don’t have forever.

We barely have an hour and a half each night to ourselves.

This wasn’t going to work.

The money we were saving over buying this new was about $1000. We’d put far more of our time into this than if we just bought it new. We decided to repost it.

Tuesday morning it went back up on Craig’s List. Tuesday night we ordered a new one (actually cheaper and better (we think) than this one new). By Thursday night we had a confirmed buyer.

Sunday we’re delivering it to them (with a fee).

Hopefully next weekend the new will be in and we’ll start painting it.

With any luck it will be up by Memorial Day.

Live and learn.

– b