Building a Home Playground

The next time you go over to Home Depot, Lowe's, or any other home improvement store, take some time to stop and look at the home playground sets that they have there. While these are nice, and in the cases of the basic models fairly affordable, I have found that they seem to lack a sense of originality or uniqueness. Building a home playground is something that anyone can do, as long as they take a little time, and use some creativity.

There are a few things though that people need to consider before they begin hammering away on their newest home improvement project. The guidelines listed below should help anyone interested in building a home playground that is perfectly suited to their needs.

• Finances. The first thing that you are going to need to do is take a look at your finances. Yep—finances. This is important because it is going to help you to know what it is that you can afford. Think about it for a minute, some of the premade kits that you can purchase at the home improvement stores, or on line, start at $169 and only go up from there. I have seen some that go for around $4,000, so it is important to know how much you can spend, since that is going to help determine several of the other steps as well.
• Plan. Try actually drawing out an idea of what you would like to have in your playground, and where you would like it. Do you want a sandbox, swing set, slide, jungle gym or even a tree house/fort? What materials is it going to be made from? Is it going to be made from wood, plastic or metal? How much are the materials going to cost? Take the time to draw out a diagram of what your yard looks like, and while it doesn't have to be perfect try to make it to scale. This allows you to have a template for your ideas, and you can change things around to suit your needs or tastes as you wish until you decide on what is going to work best.
• Hire, or not? Finally, you are going to need to decide whether you are going to hire someone else to do the work, or are you going to do it yourself? There are benefits to both, and drawbacks to both. Hiring a contractor can be an adventure in and of itself, and that is one reason why you want to do the previous two steps, as they are going to give you an idea of what exactly you want. If you do your own improvement work, then you can use the previous two steps as your overall plans.