The coolest thing about the back yard is the shed with a clubhouse on it. The previous owner had a shed, and then he built a clubhouse on top of it, and added boardwalks going around it and leading to a slide. There was originally just the handrails with no balusters, so if a 2 or 3 year old were up there, there’s a good chance of them falling through, under the handrail, and dropping about 8 feet to the ground. I went to the lumber store and priced around for the 1x1’s or 1x2’s I’d need, and it came out to be a little more than I had on hand, plus I’d need nails, a workbench, a circular saw, etc… remember this is my first house, EVERYTHING is a clean slate here, including my tool collection!
Here's how the clubhouse/shed was originally. The steps would swivel from toe to heel, the paint was cheap and peeling, but the lumber used was good, the roof is well made, and the slide is new! See the open gaps under the hand rails? Not very good for my kids then ages 2 and 5. Economizing is key, every step of the way. I went to work finding out the most affordable (or even free) ways I could accomplish this goal. I was at work, walking outside (it’s what I do during the warmer months to get my brain awake and burn off some of the junk I shouldn’t be eating), and saw a bunch of wooden palettes stacked up. I thought “hmm… free lumber!” My boss said I could take a few if I wanted, but they recycle them and get some of a deposit back on them, so I couldn’t take very many. I think at the time I somehow figured I needed about 15 palettes to harvest enough wood to make balusters for the entire length of handrails around the clubhouse. My wife’s grandpa heard I was looking for free palettes, and the very next day I had all that I needed, and then enough for many bonfires afterwards!
The free time I had for the next few days was spent getting familiar with my new wonderbar (like a crowbar but flat), my wife’s uncle’s hand club hammer (a mini sledge hammer), my work gloves, and a simple hammer for pulling out the nails from the pieces of wood after they were separated. 3 or so days of work later, I had the wood set aside and ready for use.
All this free lumber from 15 or so free palettes and only three days of hard work. It came up with a nice variety of plank sizes & thicknesses. To save money on tools, my dad gave me his work bench, and my wife’s uncle let me borrow his circular saw. Once all the pieces were cut to length, I took them down to the clubhouse and went to work hammering them in place, using a 4” block of wood for spacing, and my new level to make sure they were perfectly vertical. The 'yield' I got from the palettes was half 4" wide, and half were 6" wide, and some were 2x4's... So I decided to put the balusters up in a wide-narrow-wide-narrow pattern, and saved the 2x4's for other important things...
Just one of the "more important things" I used some of the 2x4's for...There was originally a fireman’s pole on one side of the front, but I removed this and covered the side up with balusters. Maybe when my kids are old enough for it I’ll put it back on… For now, it looks like the pole might make a pretty awesome tether-ball pole...
The clubhouse now with balusters! And the steps are now reinforced. 
Now the fireman pole is gone and the hole filled in with balusters,...and there's a very young mastiff pup named Lola come to see!
My son was now able to relax and have a good old time up in the clubhouse without my wife or me worrying about him falling through. Of course once I got the balusters up, I still wasn’t quite happy with the overall “look” of the clubhouse. I went out and bought some medium dark brown paint and spent the next several evenings painting. As I was in between painting sessions, I splurged and bought a little disc swing for underneath the boardwalk, a plastic toy steering wheel to go where the fireman’s pole once was, reinforced the flimsy steps, and there was still… something… missing…
SWINGS! I researched for a couple days on how to build a swing set: make an a-frame using one long horizontal 4x6 beam and make diagonal legs using 4x4 posts, and hold the 4x4’s together with a horizontal 2x6 plank on each end. Simple! …But I wanted my a-frame to come off from the clubhouse’s post, becoming part of the building, instead of just building a separate a-frame swing set. I mean, ‘anybody’ can do ‘that’. So I went to Lowe’s with my Uncle-In-Law (he might as well be a professional lumberjack, we’ll say that much!) and got all the metal brackets I could find that looked like what I needed to fix the wooden posts together, got a bunch of strong wood-screws, all the lumber I needed, a couple swings, a trapeze, and all the hardware for them that I needed, 4” and 6” bolts and nuts and a new drill bit (a spade drill bit) to drill through 6” of wood.
My U-I-L helped me get the a-frame put together, and the installing process went a LOT smoother and easier than either one of us expected. When we finished, I remember us saying to each other “Man, that was easy! Did we do it right?!” The hardest part was getting the huge frame up in place. It was basically a HUGE letter A (except without the horizontal support plank yet), with a 10 foot long 4x6 beam coming out perpendicularly from its peak. We had it sit on it’s end, legs down, one of us got up in the clubhouse, and the other had to lift the frame up onto its feet, trusting that the main joint would hold while the to-be horizontal 4x6 post headed towards the person in the clubhouse with his arms reaching toward it! Fortunately it worked. I think it was my U-I-L who was up in the clubhouse, he held the beam in place while I climbed the step ladder and screwed about 18 wood screws into it and the clubhouse's post through metal brackets. The only thing I didn’t factor in was how far the feet would sink into the ground. The 4x6 started out perfectly horizontal, but now the a-frame end is probably 2 or 3 inches lower. Eh… win some lose some.
The swing set is installed and holds two adults and a kid on the trapeeze. I know it does. The first thing my U-I-L and I did once it was installed was to test it to make sure it was safe for the little kids. Now I could finish painting! Once the swings were installed I could paint the rest of the clubhouse while the kids were enjoying their new swings. Before I knew it, though, the warm weather receded and now I just have to wait for spring to paint the a-frame of the swing set addition.
Almost done. I'm thinking the 2 feet of extra overhang could be used for a climbing rope or something...... Next on the list: the upstairs bathroom tile floor...?
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