Where to start? When Hannah was a very little girl, Santa brought a wooden swing set to our house. It has served us well and all 7 of the grand kids have put it to good use. But, it is beginning to show a bit of wear. The three youngest still love playing on it. In fact, they call it Nana and Papa's playground. I was looking at it the other day with my "new eye" and realized that it probably had a number of good years left if I just gave it a nice update. Now, as everyone in my family knows, nothing I do gets done without one thing leading to another AND...a story.
This story starts last week with me heading to Lowes to pick up 2 new swings. Of course, the inexpensive ones were blue and yellow - not my colors - so, it was two of the high priced ones for me. Too bad my story - and one thing leading to another - doesn't stop there! I spied the tarps and knew we could use one of them too. I also knew it wasn't the right size for our set but thought I could whip up new seams on my machine.
Home I go and when I carefully checked the material the new tarp was made out of, I felt it would perforate along any seam sewn. On to plan B - a good construction adhesive.
I used the old tarp as a pattern and measured - actually more than once. Not usually how I roll but I was having a hard time with the old tarp being so brittle and the measuring tape slip sliding around. When I thought I had it right, I cut the new tarp and glued in the new seams.
Since I was gone for a few days, the glue had a good chance to set well - too bad as I later wished I could pry it apart - but I am getting ahead of myself.
I also had to buy new grommets - a WHOLE other story but I will spare you. Today was the day to apply the grommets and get this thing put back together. The "grommeting" was fun and I was pretty proud of how well they turned out. Yeah me! But, let's just say that I forgot a PVC pole would have to slip into the casing so my grommets were a tad too close to the edge but with some WD40, a bit of grommet bending and lots of perseverance, I got them on. But then when I went to put the PVC poles back into the wood on the set, I was at least an inch too narrow...and, no matter how hard I tried to stretch and pull, it WAS NOT HAPPENING! I tried to convince myself it would be fine but it is not!. I can't begin to tell you how many hours this little fiasco has taken and now here I am having to go buy another tarp and start the whole thing again. This time my husband is going to hold the tape measure and I am going to measure twice - cut once. Believe me, it has been an expensive lesson! Not only do I have to buy another tarp, I need to buy another set of grommets. The good part is that my hubby felt so bad for all of my efforts being in vain that he is now practically INSISTING that we get a new slide also. And then maybe, if we can find one, a new teeter totter also. Hmmmm, maybe I'm not quite as dumb as I was thinking. Stay tuned.
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