What a Mess

I got the old paneling and drywall out of the closet.

I got the slide reassembled.

We discovered the top/entrance to the slide sits about 15″ away from the wall because of the bottom  bend/tube cutting back in under itself.

Ok. So we have to make a bridge/catwalk of some kind from the wall to the entrance. We can do that.

We also discovered the 5′ slide is quite a doozy. There’s not a whole lot of sliding in 5′ and 360°. You basically drop down, then slide out the bottom.

Being the ultra concerned parents that we are, I held it up and Jen dropped Lauren in to see how it worked.

Thump! Swoosh!

She spilled out the bottom squealing and smiling ear to ear asking to do it again.

Must not be too bad.

Ran into another issue.

In order to keep it tucked in the room and not sticking into the hallway/entrance at all, we had to move it significantly toward the existing climbing wall.

This created two problems. The first and most obvious is the lack of climbing wall extension on that wall. The second and trickier for me is it’s moved into the wall area next to the stairs. In order to get this thing up (and now fashion a bridge), I have to rearrange the studs in the wall. That’s fine and dandy when the drywall is removed on the inside and the wall is straight and square, but over next to the stairs it is not. Because of the stair runner, I can’t really get access at the top of the wall to install a new stud.

The easy solution, which I’ve started and decided against a couple of times now, is to take the drywall off that wall in the room as well. With all the drywall off the thought was it would be easier to put the studs where I need them (and ‘fix’ the hole we made when we dropped the slide into the wall), then put new drywall up matching all that we have around the room.

Unfortunately this isn’t so easy. Because the drop ceiling in the room is at a lower height than the top of the wall where the stud needs to go, I still can’t get to where I need to get to put the stud in.

So after making a bunch of cuts and holes thinking I was going to take all the drywall off, I’m back to thinking it will stay and I’ll just have to try really hard to get the stud in anyway. Or at least try to get the stud in before I decide to take all the drywall off and find out not having it doesn’t help me.

Oh. And we went to the town Halloween parade. The girls and Mom were super cute in their Halloween costumes, but the parade kind of sucked. The kids get more candy at the 4th of July parade in my Mom’s home town and see more parade stuff. This parade had a band, some fire trucks and some majorettes. That was it. Whatever.

– b