We have one of those crazy little gravel patio areas that townhouse builders euphemistically call a "pocket yard." And our builder, thought he would be so clever as to add a little deck in this area. Let me tell you, he wasn't very clever at all. What he ended up doing, was making our only real outdoor space completely unusable. The deck was too small to use for anything, and worse, it took up so much space out there, that we couldn't even use the area around it. Thankfully, we are a handy lot, and were able to turn that deck into a step, and free up almost the entire area for the boys.
But once that horrible deck was gone, I began to focus on our hodge-podge sandbox. Back when we had a giant yard, we thought it would be a great idea to use two of those blue rigid kiddie pools to make a sandbox, and it worked famously until this year's snow cracked the top pool. So now rain went in, but couldn't drain out and the boys found they had a pretty nasty little mud puddle.
Awhile ago, I found this sandbox on Pinterest, and I fell in love. But much to my chagrin, it is made in the UK. Turns out, it wasn't too hard for myself and D to put together for the boys. We were even able to recreate the top and how it turns into two benches for the kiddos to sit on. The best part was that we were able to reuse the boards from the deck to make the main body of the box. We used some boards from an old bookshelf for the top, and discovered we only spent maybe $20 for the hardware. We left large gaps in the bottom of the box to allow all that Pacific Northwest rain to just drain on through. And used some landscaping fabric as a liner to keep the sand in the box. We'll see how durable that turns out to be. I'm very happy we made this, and the boys love it!
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