Do homework before starting children's play area

By Stephen Hlawaty
Outdoors Columnist

As a child, the folk song "Shady Grove" succinctly captured the essence of the seasons for me by beginning with the lines "Peaches in the summer time, apples in the fall."

The song inspired me to relate the seasons with certain foods. As an adult, with a home and a family, another kind of "fruit" serves as a more potent reminder of summer, a fruit that seems to ripen and grow as summer ends, a fruit whose bittersweet juices have been tasted by many, a fruit more commonly born - for better or worse - from the union of a married couple. Of course, I'm talking about the honey-do.

My most recent harvest from my household's honey-do garden took shape in a child's wooden play structure. Not only would it be fun for our two growing boys Ethan and Benjamin, but it would also be a valuable addition to our home and property.

The world of a child's play structure is a large one. An initial Google search on the topic drew nearly five million web sites. To make things a bit more manageable, I generated a short list of things to consider when narrowing down the kind of structure I intended to build. Included on my list were cost, shelf life, space, location, tools and degree of difficulty.

Cost: Local lumber and construction retailers were not cost competitive when compared with online retailers. The price spectrum for these play structures was broad, so it helped to have a firm price in place. Ours was $1,000. While one could reasonably purchase and build a starter child's play structure for less, those with whom I have spoken, who have taken on similar projects, admit that their average cost fell between $1,500 and $2,500. While these estimates include the cost of lumber, many child play structure retailers do not.

Shelf life: It's important to consider this project as a kind of investment in your child's safe and happy playtime at home. The offerings of today's modular child's play structures almost ensure that your child will get at least 10 years' play out of the structure. Aside from swing sets, many play structures provide options for forts and towers, rock walls, trapeze and monkey bars, rope ladders, disc and tire swings, punching bags, zip lines and more. In short, it's easy to add or remove items as your child grows older. And unlike the old metal play sets that had to be cemented into the ground, today's wooden play structures are portable - albeit heavy - if ever you had to move and wanted to take the structure with you.

Space and location: Another important consideration in choosing to build a child's play structure is space and location. Nowadays, these play structures accommodate small to very large spaces. However, the Consumer Product Safety Commission suggests that there be a minimum 6-foot clearance in all directions of the play structure. Additionally, consider the location and visibility of the play structure. Will it be visible from one of your home's common rooms such as a kitchen or living room? Ours isn't, which inspired us to build a patio nearby, so we could supervise our children's safe play.

Tools: Any do-it-yourself job requires that you have and can properly operate the requisite tools. For this project, that might include miter or table saws, circular saw, drill with appropriate bits, posthole digger, level, chalk line, ratchet and socket set and appropriate hardware. These items will generally be listed for you in the construction plan if purchasing your child's play structure from a retailer.

Degree of difficulty: Finally, you should consider how comfortable you are in performing basic carpentry techniques such as lifting, measuring, cutting and drilling. Working with lumber that might include 12-foot 2x8s might require some assistance, so a well-planned phone call to a friend or brother-in-law might be in order. If all this seems too daunting, you could always hire a professional contractor to do the work for you.

Keeping these basic things in mind will help in more easily planning and building your child's very own play structure. In the end, we built ours through Detailed Play Systems and kept within our budget. This supplier of backyard playground equipment offered a variety of options and provided an informative mail order catalog that illustrated various play structure configurations and their total costs, equipment and lumber included.

In lieu of having a park in your backyard, having a child's play structure is the next best thing.