This part was sooo satisfying because I let Edgar do it AND because we got no-mix concrete so I didn’t have to clean ANYTHING! You pour the water up to 1/3 of your hole, then dump in the concrete mix! It is amazing. With those attached, we rechecked level and then added supports with scrap wood before pouring concrete. We pre-drilled holes and then attached it all pretty quickly. We attached the L-brackets before pouring concrete so nothing would move/fall apart. We ended up with about a quarter of an inch overhang on either side because of where the posts landed when they went in the hole and we decided not to try and correct it since we were able to get everything level and flush that way. With our top board resting on top (a little scary, be careful and do not do this around children please) we started carefully adjusting the placement of the posts by pushing and pulling, a few fist knocks here and there, until it looked level and flush. Leveling ended up being easier than we thought. We measured the center of the post, then put 18″ in the center, and 16″ for each swing. Measure out your swing distances and get that hardware on there before your lift your top post so you aren’t doing it on a ladder looking upside down, lol. that top post is heavy as hell and you will not want to lift it over your head twice. Then that became tricky, so we decided we may as well get the top post on before we went any further. We took the top post and butted it up to the back of the upright posts to make sure the angles were correct, and then started leveling them. I put a very small layer of gravel, maybe an inch or two. Then we checked measurements again and evened them out. (They are re-paving this summer so there is a lot!). When he finished digging and we checked that the depths were the same, I ran to our street and shoveled up some gravel to put in the bottom for drainage. We actually wish we had gone all the way to 3 feet just to make it super secure for the long-term. It took him not even an hour to dig holes over 2 feet deep and 10″ wide. It worked great! We laid our top post down and marked right in front of the ends so Edgar knew where to dig. We rented a post hole digger from our base outdoor rec for $5 to save us time. We wanted to be able to dig them the same depth and call it a day. We chose the most level spot in our yard so that we didn’t have to do too much math when digging our post holes. I have also linked the two youtube videos we watched that inspired us! The videos use 12′ posts, which we thought was way overkill for kids swings or one adult bench so we did 8′ and 10′ posts and it still seems plenty huge to us. I can detail the order we took to build this though. We worked during nap time as quickly as possible so Emme didn’t wake up to anything dangerous. A baby would need a pillow or something because it is large! Easy DIY Swing Set InstructionsĪlright unfortunately I have pretty much zero photos of us assembling the DIY swing set. BUT I have to say, our swings are ADORABLE and super comfortable! Love a good Amazon find! The toddler bucket seat is definitely more for a toddler. We love that it is not a giant piece of playground equipment, and that we can change out the swings down the road to a bench swing or something more “adult” if we want. The total cost for this project ended up being over $350. Gravel (we used free gravel from our street but you can buy bags, you don’t need much).No-mix concrete bags, 125 lbs per post (more if you dig deeper/bigger holes).Swingset (we bought this pack of two and I would highly recommend waiting for them to come back in stock! Great quality and SO cute!).As an Amazon affiliate, I may earn a commision from qualify purchases (THANK YOU for helping me keep this blog running and ad-free). Some of the links below are Amazon Affiliate Links. The exact items we used are linked below. Then you need all your hardware, swings, and concrete bags. The supply list for this DIY swing set is pretty short, but it ain’t cheap! The lumber is the most expensive part of this project because as you know, lumber prices are still very high. We built this swing because our backyard was practically begging for it and also because our neighborhood park does not have any swings! Swings are our daughter’s favorite part of parks! We had to drive at least 15 minutes to find any and that didn’t seem right! So, we came up with a solution. We built a super classy DIY swing set! Yay! This was a one-nap (Our toddler takes 3-4 hour long naps) project and we are obsessed! This DIY swing set went surprisingly smoother than I thought so if you are considering it, I would say go for it.
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