The making of a playground

We decided some time ago that we wanted to do Mary Peyton a playground like Kaden and Russ's (see their Mama's blog for her frames to the right...Plain Jane Frames!). Kevin and Demetria did SUCH a good job on theirs. And hey, great ideas have to go somewhere, right? So Tommy and I decided to go ahead with this project...

This is what Mary Peyton's "play area" (if you want to call it that) looked like Saturday morning. My Daddy made her sandbox for her 1st birthday. Weeds took it over, so there's not much playing in the sand. Notice the railroad trellesses (that probably isn't spelled right) that the people who lived here before us had already put down. YEA! We already had a border!

This is the "play area" (I'm starting to feel better about this...) after we got the ground cover down. Hopefully this stuff will do it's job and keep the weeds, etc., from growing up!

Now I must interrupt the pictures with some explaining. I called Spencer's Ready Mix (who were GREAT, by the way!) a few weeks back to start getting ideas on costs, etc., for this little project. I was told to call back on the Friday before the Saturday that I wanted the pea gravel delivered. No big deal. We figured we would get Billy (Tommy's step-dad) over to help us shovel and haul in wheel barrows and that it would take about a day. Boy were we wrong. (in a good way).

The pea gravel arrived at 9:20 in a cement truck. They were able to back the truck uphill to the gate on our fence. The man then placed Tommy and Billy to where he would lower the spout, fill up the wheel barrow and off one of them would go to the "play area" where I was waiting to spread the gravel out. Our little system worked great and in about 35 minutes, we had unloaded and spread the entire truck of gravel. Billy and Linda even loaded the excess in the back of their truck to take home.

oh......................I forgot the kicker. Ted (at the gravel place) told me (when we were figuring up how much gravel I would need) that I was getting 8,400 lbs of pea gravel. Wow. I still can't quite comprehend that number.

This is the PLAY AREA after the gravel was placed. We still have to trim the ground cover and fill the sandbox back up, but it will be ready to go for her birthday party in May!!!

And she already loves it!