The Griffin Family Adventures: Project Hannah's Playscape..

Hannah has always loved to slide and until recently she thought all slides were broken. Her reaction was not a result of parental neglect from not letting her slide and enjoying one of the joys of childhood, but as a result of looking at endless playscape displays in which the slides are not attached to the tower they are just leaning up against them. After researching and pricing all the different options available in the $$$ playscape world we decided we could afford to rehab a playscape my parents were happy to donate to the cause. I don't have any before pictures of the project..shame on me.. but if you close your eyes and picture an abandoned 20-year-old deer blind type structure your vision will be pretty close to accurate. It took me 2 weeks to scrub the coating of moss and fungi off but it was worth it when I kept seeing the prices of the new playscapes float through my mind. After we (that means me) finished scrubbing the @#*&^ out of it, we had to sturdy it up. Mike replaced all the washers and bolts and we reconfigured the set up. We took Hannah to Lowes and let her pick out the slide. It was the fastest one of course and now she believes that slides can be fixed. I finally got her off of it long enough to put a coat of stain on it and we added a new roof canvas. Mike and I think it turned out great. We came in under budget and ended up only spending 1/3 of a new one that is cedar. This is a good old redwood tower.

This is the closest before shot that I could find. I had scrubbed the front panel to see what we were working with. You can see the before condition on the rest of the tower and monkey bars.