Our Backyard Adventure

This year, our big project has been a backyard playhouse. Brandon has spent months planning and sketching designs for a pirate ship in our backyard. We started Memorial weekend, and hoped to be done by Domenic's birthday. The picture below is the beginning of the adventure

Next came leveling and squaring the foundation. This turned out to be quite a task to undertake. The foundation is afterall the most important part of the structure. It has a 1 1/2 foot thick and 2 feet wide concrete base around it's entirity.

There are many, many progress pictures that could take pages to post. These show Brandon putting up the swinging doors, and Domenic proudly standing on his deck. He is so excited for the ship to be done! This is before all the windows have been put in, and the inside had been painted. I think the the slide is only up with a few bolts as well. That sucker took 5 of us just to get it up! It was a bugger!

This is the nearly finished project. It has a cargo net, a crows nest, a 7 foot turbo slide, monkey bars, triangles, a deck overlooking the pond so they can watch the goldfish, and a furnished inside, complete with stained glass windows, gold filigree inlets, and a 4 foot treasure chest because what pirate ship is complete without a treasure chest. There is also a captains wheel and a working telescope. The kids have loved camping out inside it! They spend all their free time out there. What a huge project, the the rewards have far outweighed the many grueling hours that we have put in!