Last year, around this time, I was watching my oldest son blast aliens on the computer, and started thinking about my own summers as a kid. I spent days exploring the creek bed outside our house, playing football with friends, or just digging holes for the fun of it. I knew my son’s summer was drawing to a close, and I badly wanted him to have some of those experiences for himself; so I tossed him outside, and forbade him to come back in until dinner.
He said, “But there’s nothing to do!”—and while that’s usually the sort of thing I’ve learned to tune out, this time it stuck with me. We don’t live next to a creek bed; we live in a sprawling suburban development. My dad had built me a rope swing and a tree-house; our backyard was a big flat lawn full of nothing. Maybe my kid had a point.
I decided that this summer would be different—I couldn’t give my kid the crawdad hunts in the creek bed, but I was going to make our backyard fun. Here are some ideas I found while I was planning—five simple, DIY ways to make your yard fun for under $100. To execute these DIY seamlessly, it’s advisable to use the best power drills.
1. A pile of dirt
Seriously—if you want kids to get creative outside, dump a couple fifty-pound bags of soil in your yard. It’s cheaper than a sandbox, and you can rake it into your garden when you’re done. My kids pretend it’s the surface of an alien planet, or a scorched post-apocalyptic wasteland (we probably let them watch too many movies). If you want to make it a permanent thing, box it in with a couple railroad ties, nail them down, and you’re done or you can even have a garden, as there are many outdoor storage sheds options to keep the tools as well. If you want to add fun hardscaping elements in your yard, you may consider hiring a hardscaping company St Charles. For maintaining a clean and tidy yard, you might also want to look into the best garden waste removal in Auckland.
2. Campfires and s’mores
If you’ve ever had kids in Scouting, you know that the opportunity to play with fire can get almost any kid outside—and this way, you can be right with them to teach fire safety and responsibility. A fire pit is a snap to build—at its most basic, you can simply lay down a ring of cinderblocks and dump in some gravel, with a charcoal grate on top. You can get fancier if you want, but our redneck fire pit does its job admirably, and my kids and I love spending late-summer nights out by the fire, watching the sparks fly upward.
If you need any fire safety tips, you can easily ask the experts which can be found on sites such as 防火門.
3. A DIY bench swing
This project is easier than it looks, and it’ll impress your wife. Find an old bench, saw the legs off, and set the seat longwise on a pair of two-by-fours—all the weight is going to hang from them, so make sure there’s space on either end for the rope to tie down. Screw the two-by-fours into the seat nice and tight, and then you can drill four holes in the ends of the two-by-fours for the rope. Loop the rope around the bough twice, fasten it to the four holes, and you’ve got a bench swing. Aside from a bench swing, you can have also incorporate a playhouse in your backyard to spice things up. Choosing a wooden playhouse for your kids to enjoy isn’t easy. That’s why you can ask professionals for help.
The real trick is getting your rope lengths even so that the bench isn’t lopsided, so wait to cut the rope until you’ve tested it out. Then, if you want extra credit, a fresh coat of paint and a pair of outdoor pillows will make it look like something out of Better Homes and Gardens. You may also build a deck in your yard using high-quality materials from Ipe Decking Georgia companies. There’s a fence contractor in Eugene OR that does both decking and fencing.
4. Set up a tent
This tip is by far the easiest—all it takes is $75 and ten minutes of prep—but kids absolutely love having a tent in the yard. A teepee is a slightly more challenging project, but you can get it done in less than an hour, and it’s a lot more fun. They’re better ventilated, so they’re not as stuffy in the daytime—and if you build it around your fire pit, it’ll be a nice hangout for both kids and grownups, well into the winter.
5. And (of course) a treehouse
We can’t very well talk about summer fun in the backyard without mentioning the classic treehouse. This is probably the most labor-intensive project on the list, and it takes some know-how to get it done safely. If you’ve got a tree with a thick trunk and broad boughs, this is a good candidate for DIY—otherwise, you should leave it to the pros. In our case, we had a perfect tree for it, so all it needed was a basic pallet frame, and a roof to keep the rain off. For more great and fun ideas, check out Backyard Games USA.
Mike Freiberg is a staff writer for HomeDaddys, a resource for stay-at-home dads, work-at-home dads, and everything in between. He’s a handyman, an amateur astronomer, and a tech junkie, who loves being home with his two kids. He lives in Austin.