The thousand pound crate

Yesterday I signed for a delivery that was dropped off in our driveway by a forklift. It’s the new play set we ordered from Vinyl Adventure.

Tonight I unpacked the crate so I could manage transporting smaller pieces to the back yard, and so we’d be able to once again utilize the garage for parking.

And with an unexpected confluence of the universe, our front courtyard was finished today, so I didn’t have to traverse mounds of dirt, rock and paver stone to get the pieces to the back.

My project for Saturday is to see how close I can come to assembling the play set. I’m hoping Mark will help me—mostly out of pity and partly because of friendship (it’s times like these that I know my brother’s glad he lives in Salt Lake).

There are many pieces: three swings, monkey bars, a play house, picnic table and two slides. The quality of the pieces was apparent by their weight. We think it’ll look very nice and provide hours of outdoor enjoyment for the little ones.

We’ll snap some photos of the front yard tomorrow and post them so you can see the progress. We’re still not done with the cultured stone crew; they’ll be back Saturday morning. And unfortunately, we learned today that some of the trim pieces we need won’t arrive for several weeks. So that crew still won’t be done for many more weeks.

But the front courtyard, plants and rock are all in. The outdoor lighting still requires some electrical work that I hope to get to next week.

I seem to recall suggesting perhaps we’d be done with the re-landscaping project by the end of October. I’m beginning to think that estimate may be too optimistic.