Swing Set Restoration
Project Background
During the summer of 2011, my hometown experienced a microburst which, at the time, we all thought was a tornado. The extremely high winds that it brought tore down the largest tree behind our property, an old elm, which snapped our 40-foot tall pine tree at the base, effectively removing all shade from our yard. During its fall, the large elm also broke the main structural beam on our wooden swing set, which caused the whole swing section to collapse. This frustrated me greatly, as I had grown up with those trees and that swing set and had lost all three in one night. I decided that I would repair the swing set rather than throw away the broken beam to partially mitigate that loss.
My mom came with me to Home Depot and purchased the necessary lumber, nuts and bolts to replace everything that had been broken. In a few days, using the tools we had around, I drilled holes for and installed all the old components of the swing set, replaced the broken vertical support, and attached the new structural beam. Though I was pretty old at the time and didn’t get much use out of it after the fact, it was satisfying to have resurrected the broken structure, even if the new house owners did tear it down only two years later.
