Kids Indoor Playset

[ryan carlino]

I'm a little late in posting this, but I'm sure we all know about time getting away from us :)

It all started last summer at a kids play center in Crested Butte, CO. They have a really nice indoor playset with swings, a slide, places to climb, and more. The company that makes it (Cedar Works, http://www.cedarworks.com/product/indoor) has a fully modular system (their Rhapsody line) and you can design your own at their web site and have it shipped to your house. We priced out something for our basement, weren't willing to pay the $3k+ price. Then the wheels started spinning...

I started in Sketch-Up and did many iterations of the design. I attached my nearly final version (without the ladder) below. I wanted to go for a less mass-produced, pre-drilled look and more of a no-visible-screw design. I also wanted less seams along with "floating" panels for the wall. All this is great on paper, but would lead to some difficulty during assembly (more on that later!).

It didn't take much to convince the wife, "I could do it for a few hundred dollars in wood". She's since learned to consider the "full" cost (time, new tools, finishing supplies). Is it wrong to sub-consciously design a feature that requires a new tool?

Anyhow, I ordered a good chunk of 10/4 ash for the vertical posts, 4/4 ash for the horizontal slats, and 5 sheets of 4x8 1/2" baltic birch ply for the floors and wall panels.

The 10/4 ash was the thickest wood I ever dealt with. It's no easy task to move a piece that's 12" wide and 16' long!! You probably know that I chose ash for its durability and resistance to cracking - good stuff for kids to hang and jump on. Initial milling of the posts was many passes with an inadequate circular saw blade to just cut these "slabs" in half so I could pick them up. I then took them to a friend's shop where his 14" Powermatic helped make them into 2.25" square posts. Even with this 3-phase giant saw, we were able to stop the blade. I'm glad I didn't try it at home.

Once the posts were shaped right, I added stopped dovetails. First a pass with a 1/2" straight bit. Then finish the job with the dovetail bit. There are pics of this process below. It was pretty fun, although nerve-wracking at times handling such big pieces of wood.

The slats were a lot easier. I had the 4/4 ash planed down for me to just over 3/4" by the lumber yard. Rip the boards to width, cut to length, and put the stopped dovetails on the ends. There were about 40 slots total.

We got the wood in early November and by the end of the month, we did a dry fit of the posts and slats. You can see the main customer in the photo. This was the easy part and pretty rewarding. It was a giant wooden erector set with no screws.
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[ryan carlino]

Next it was time to cut the floors. I broke down the big sheets with the circular saw and straight edge and did final cuts on the TS. I made a jig to notch out the corners for the posts with the router.

The wall panels have a variety of shapes. I cut them all with the router and home made templates/jigs. This was frustrating since I had hoped a 1/4" bit would just plow through the material. It did for a while. Then it broke. I think I broke 3 or 4 in the process. Then I decided to try different methods and bits. After all this, I concluded that this type of work is best suited for a CNC machine, not a guy with a router and some templates and clamps. It was very time consuming as every set-up was different. Plus, all the cuts had to be rounded over and sanded.

Sanding was the worst part. It was a lot of hand sanding - probably the most I've ever done. The routed features were knuckle-busters and paper-eaters. In the end, though, I feel good about letting both our kids play in there and not having to worry about any sharp edges.

The "clips" were fun. These are the pieces holding the wall panels. There are over 100 clips in the project. I used leftover 10/4 ash to rout the profiles I needed. I then used the chop saw to batch them out. Once they were cut, their edges were sanded and holes were pre-drilled for attachment during assembly.

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[ryan carlino]

I did the finishing in stages since it was too much to do all at once and I had to deal with cold weather. I waited for warm winter days (60’s in December is one of the nice things about Colorado) and sprayed 3 coats of Sherwin-Williams HiBild pre-cat lacquer on everything. It took 3 gallons and a lot of time.

Assembly took place on President’s Day (I remember because it is a day off of work). It had to be done in place since there is no way to move this out of the room it’s in. The room has 8-feet ceilings with a step-down soffit for the vents. The posts are 78 inches tall, but the L-shape of the final design does not allow it to be built on its side and then stood up. So, I built the back 4 sections as one assembly and stood it up. The wall panels could be slid in from the top when it was laying down. This was the easy part. The L-shape was tough since I had to balance some panels while engaging the sliding dovetails. Then the whole thing had to by propped up while I screwed the floor panels down from underneath. My wife (and assistant that day) said that if we ever move, we’re going to use a chainsaw to disassemble it. I thought it was fun – definitely a puzzle.


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[ryan carlino]

After assembling and sliding it into position, we were happy to see it finished for now. A few days later, I built the ladder, but we haven’t gotten around to the slide (still not sure if we should just get a plastic one, or build a matching wooden one). I can't find a good picture of the ladder right now, so these will have to do.

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[Lee Schierer]

Impressive.Is the area under the raised plat form in the corner a through tunnel?

[Larry Fox]

Wow, wow and WOW - that is very impressive and a tremendous amount of work. I am sure the kids love it.

[ryan carlino]

Yep! Our one-year-old crawls from one end to the other. There is a ladder on the left end that is fun to climb - I need to get a pic of that.