Caught Up in a Project
Tuesday morning, Christin and I look out at our back patio and I could sense that she wanted something to change. It's a little boxed in, but we made it work for a while. Now, Christin wanted the lattice to come down, non-structural boards to come down and really open up the back patio.
I look at her, "fine," and go grab some tools to get to work. She was right, it was starting to get really crowded in such a small space. After the lattice and boards came down it felt better. Christin was wanting to see her roses more, and maybe our kids when they're outside playing. But I got the feeling it was mainly about her ability to see more of her roses.
Anyway, now there was a space that I could knockout one of my projects that I have been wanting to do for the kids.
The sandbox.
I had a rough idea of how I wanted to go about it, but still hadn't worked out all the kinks in my head. I also, didn't want to spend any money on this project except for the sand. I knew that I had enough scrap wood in my shop to make this work. It was just a matter of putting the pieces in the right place.
Since I had decided to start so suddenly, I forgot to get the camera and film the project. Oops. I actually forgot to take pictures of the process in general. I got extremely caught up in the project and was determined to finish in one day. I guess I just really wanted a new place for our kids to play and where they could all reach without the youngest having to stand on top of something to reach. Luckily, my wonderful wife managed to get a couple of pictures of the process.
My girls were watching me most of the time, and right after I screwed together the first three pieces, Quinn looked at me and said, "the sandbox is ready for us to play in now!" Uhh, no. Not quite yet.
The hardest part of this was digging through all my scrap wood to find pieces that would fit, or were at least long enough for me to cut to length. So, after several hours of digging through scrap, hand cutting, screwing and kids asking if it was ready, I ended up with this.
I call it, "Frankenstein's Monster Sandbox."
The next day, I took the kids on a venture to find sand and new toys for the sandbox. Christin loved it because she got the house to herself for an hour or so. I loved it because I got to spend some time with my kids and watch them get excited about playing in their new sandbox. We found sand, found toys and headed home. Before I could get the bags of sand poured, they had toys in hand ready to go asking me, "could you put the sand in now daddy?" Okay.
It's not the prettiest looking sandbox, but it's functional and my kids love it and that's all that matters to me.
