FINALLY FINALLY FINALLY. After a year of our poor tiny child having to live without a roof over his head, we’ve provided shelter. (On his playset.)

We left off with our DIY playset tutorial – see part 1 and part 2 – unsure how we’d be creating a roof on the tower portion, with promises to complete that for you soon. We lied. We’re sorry. But if it makes it easier to forgive us for our tardiness, consider that our own firstborn has suffered the consequences of our delay as well. (Maybe that makes it worse?)

Anyway, here we are with Part 3! Written by Andy, since he’s the one who created these plans. And then executed them. And who is a math teacher, and therefore gets forced to write all the lengthy mathy woodworking tutorials on this blog.

I know we said we’d be telling you how to build the roof portion of the playset today, but before we did that, we made a few changes to the original design to solve a couple of problems. This is how it looked when we left off:

These are optional steps, but I want to show them to you first, so you can see why we built the roof the way we did.

Problem number 1: Definitely not toddler accessible.

There is no way that our barely walking one-year-old was going to climb this ladder.  So I starting thinking of other ways to get him from the ground to the inevitable fun above.  My first solution involved a some sort of jetpack to propel him into the playset.

But even with all of Kelly’s Craigslist Shopping Tips, I couldn’t find one online in the budget. Hey Fisher Price, there’s a gap in the market here!

So on to plan B: build a nice little ramp in place of the steps.

I used the same decking boards that make up the floor of the tower.  The sides are 2×4’s with 45-degree cuts at both ends.  The steps are 1×2’s.  And underneath I used several 2×4’s to hold it all together.

I screwed it all together with the same screws that we used on the decking for the tower.  Then I attached it to the tower with hinges so I could put the ramp up and hold it in place when I didn’t want Weston to be able to access it.

The whole ramp is 6 ft. long and 22 3/4 in. wide.  To build it, I layed the 4 pieces of decking on the ground with a little space between them, and then screwed the cross 2×4’s onto the decking.  Then attached the side rails with screws from below.  Then screwed all of the steps from above.  You could also just permanently mount the ramp to the tower if you don’t like my hinge idea.

The extra lumber needed for the ramp option:

• 3 8′ 2×4’s
• 2 12′ decking
• 2 8′ 1×2’s

Total cost for the ramp was about $15.

Problem #2: Guaranteed head injury to enter and exit the tower

Look how nicely little one year old Weston fits through the hole to go down the slide.

Now imagine our huge, rambunctious, klutzy two-year-old trying to fit through that same hole.  Ouch!

So we raised it up like this.

It was an easy fix but I did have to buy a couple more 8-foot 2×4 boards.  Here’s how I did it.

Move board #1 up to the top.  Remove boards 2 and 3, cut them a little shorter to fit their new spot and then screw them in.  Boards 4 and 5 are new. Cut these to the correct length and then screw them in.  Repeat on the other side of the tower.  (Notice how board number 1 sticks out too far on the left and right?  That’s okay – we need that to happen to build the roof.)

I’ll be back Monday with Part 4 (the last part!) to show you how we built the roof and created our own shelter. Let’s be honest: there’s nothing more manly than making your own shelter.

(Yes, even if it’s the shelter on a kids’ playset.)

Have you attempted anything like this? Ever left a project for a year before you finished it?