Sandbox

For some time I have been considering building a sandbox in our backyard. It really came down to Jacob's happiness versus mine. The boy loves to dig, but I couldn't stand the thought of sand strewn hither and yon- including in the house.

Two factors swayed me his way -
(1) I cannot keep him out of my vegetable garden.
(2) One day Rick was out of town and Jacob was recounting his fun day to him over the phone. He told how we had gone to the zoo, and on a play-date and then out to dinner. Then he ended with "But I didn't have a very good day, because I didn't dig today."

OK, the digging thing is serious.

One reason I love & appreciate Rick is that he goes along with all my schemes, and is super patient with all my plans and ideas - even when they inevitably go awry.

Since we didn't have plans over Memorial Day, I proposed that building a sandbox in the backyard would be a WONDERFUL Memorial Weekend project. We'd buy all the lumber & dig it out on Saturday, and then build it on Monday. Simple.

I found plans online for a big sized one, and we went & bought all the lumber (3 times the price quoted in the article - but we weren't surprised - we're building it in NY and everything is more expensive here.) Oh, we also bought a pick axe to dig out the space. Since our yard is sloped, we'd have to dig it in on one side, and build it up on the other.

Getting started, aka the official "before" picture.

With Rebekah helping us, we actually made pretty great progress. We gave a bunch of the grass we cut off the top to our neighbors who filled in bare spots. Perfect.

We also had some other stellar helpers.

By the end of the day we had dug it all out -

and sorted the lumber ready for Monday
(we had it all pre-cut to length for a small fee at the lumber yard.)

The work might have gone a little faster if I didn't keep stopping to take pictures of the garden whenever I picked up the camera to record our progress!
I couldn't help it, everything is filling in so nicely, and it's great to see the rewards for my efforts!

We stopped for dinner & got the kids into bed, and then left them with Bek to go and buy the gravel for the drainage in the bottom. If you have to go to Home Depot for 33 heavy bags of gravel, I suggest going at 9pm right before they close - we were the only one's there.

The next morning we read the instructions more carefully, ready to start building & realized that we had dug the hole WAY too big on one side. Bummer. All that wasted effort - not to mention filling it back in was no fun.


That day we got it framed.

(Only because we completely ignored the kids.)

In the evening, I fed the kids & got them into bed while Rick built the cover for the end (to store the other cover pieces) and the toy box lid.

And we started to fill in the side that needed to be built up.
This sure would have been a lot less work on flat ground! Too bad we don't have any.

The end of day two. (Um, yes the end of day 2 was when it was supposed to be finished - but what can I say. There was a lot of digging.)

The following Saturday we started in on day 3 of the sandbox project with measuring the tarp.

We filled it with gravel for drainage, then stapled the tarp in all the way around.
Then poked about 100 small holes in the tarp for more drainage.

Emily was pleased with our progress.

It sat like that for some time. The pattern called for cedar for all but the side benches, and pine for the sides. I wanted to use cedar to make it all match & be nicer - but we had to special order that size and it took two weeks to come in.

The cover keeps out animals, and will double as a stage if the kids want to do little plays or dance performances (which they often do.) They lift off and store in the end closest to the fence. The other end has a hinged lid and is a place to store sand toys.

The big cedar pieces came and we put them on. (When I say we, I mean Rick.)
Finally it was finished and ready for sand. This is where we came to another screeching halt. I started looking online to figure out how much sand I would need, and discovered that play sand is actually dangerous! It has been banned in California because it's carcinogenic.
Great, I just built my kids a giant death box.

I figured out we needed 45 cubic feet of sand. That's 1.67 cubic yards - or 3375 lbs of sand!! I found some that was "Safe" in California & they would ship it to me, but it was about $1 a pound. I could just see me explaining to Rick that I needed over three thousand dollars for sand!

The girl at the safe sand place told me that the "unscientific" way to make sure it doesn't contain silicates (that cause lung cancer) was to stick your hand in the sand, swish it around and pull it out. If there was a powder on your hand, it was dangerous. If I could find riverbed sand, that would be safer, or anything that has had lots of water going over it to wash it. She also said that since it's an outdoor sandbox, rain washing through the sand would be helpful, as long as we have good drainage (making all that gravel seem worth it.)

It took a little effort, but I finally found a place that had sand from the beach in Long Island. I went and checked it out - no powder. I ordered it, and it was only $150 (+ $75 for delivery.) Bargain!

The closest we could dump it was on the driveway. We'd have to bucket it down to the backyard.

Waiting for the sand.

So on the morning of June 27th - over a month after we started our "2 day" project, we filled the sandbox. Jacob & Emily both wanted to do the 1st bucket - so they did it together.

Dad's wheelbarrow loads made the work go faster.

Before you knew it - we were done!

Jane & Stella played happily in the pile on the driveway while we worked - making me wonder why we hadn't just dumped a big pile instead of building a sandbox!

Ready for kids!

The sandbox is 5' x 6' x 2' deep.
As soon as it was finished, my 3 and the two kids from next door got in it, and
I thought "We should have made it bigger!"

It will be fine, I doubt that all 5 of them will ever be in there at once again
- it was just a novelty, since it was new.

Good work Daddy! Thanks for the sandbox.

We still need to slope the ground nicely away all around it, and grow grass - but there's no way I can keep the kids off it long enough to establish seed, so we're going to wait until fall to do that.