I love finding new uses for old things or things that I no longer have a use for. For example, in my kitchen I hung and old wooden ladder above my stove that I hang my pots and pans from. My daughter’s small 3 drawer dresser that she out grew is now in my kitchen and holds dish towels, all my teas and other items. It also gives me extra work space. I put my knife block on it and found a cutting board that fits on there perfectly, so I now have a space to work when I am at the stove. Pine paneling from an old cabin has been turned into dining room benches by my husband and a pie cupboard from my larger kitchen now does duty in the laundry room as a cupboard for supplies.
So now I have been faced with the challenge of what to do with my daughters big, wooden swing set/play house/ slide. You know the ones. They sell them at the home stores and they are big and heavy. But at 13, she has grown to big to fit in the play house and has little desire to use the swing set. Since we have grandchildren now as well, we are hesitant to get rid of it as they enjoy it, but it is showing it’s age and we are afraid of it becoming unsafe. It currently sits on a narrow piece of land which is really an easement and that space is not large enough to have room to swing and to attach the slide. So what to do with the monstrosity.
It hit me the other day. We are going to take the swing side off. We have been wanting to put up one big wooden swing for the kids, but didn’t know where. So if we take the swing side off, all hubby has to do is build legs for the side that is currently attached to the play house. He will move it to our front yard and cut it down to fit between two very big pine trees we have there. He will remove all the plastic, icky looking play stuff and make one or two really nice big wooden swings. He will also clean it up and re-stain it. So that solves the swinging problem.
With the swing part removed, we can then turn the play house part side ways and move it down between some trees, which will make it seem like a tree house and we will have the room to attach the slide. Under the play house we used to have a sand box and we can re-do that as well. We will clean it up and re-stain or re-paint it and it will be grandchild ready. I really want the kids to enjoy coming to grammy and grandpas house in the mountains. I am going to see if we can at least get to the slide part this weekend. It might not get re-painted, but perhaps we can get things shifted around and make a start so come spring all we will have to do is paint or stain them. I just love it when I can think of a new use for something.
