We had an old swing set in our backyard that was not getting much attention. The kids are age 7 and 9 and this summer they seemed to have really outgrown it. I was not very optimistic about my ability to direct this swing set to a deserving family. We live in Chicago and I knew if we put it out in the alley it would be taken for scrap metal, which made me kind of sad. So it sat in our yard looking really terrible for most of the summer. With my daughter away at camp, my son and I decided to transform it into a play fort.
Materials
- large painter's tarp, way bigger than the swingset
- waterproof duct tape
- heavy duty thread and needle
- felt craft squares
What we did is lay the tarp over the swing set and use a combination of tape and sewing to stretch it tightly over the two large rectangle planes. Then we used the excess canvas pieces to cover the two ends. We cut a simple door way that rolls up and sewed on some ribbon so the kids can roll it up and hold it open or leave it down.
To decorate the tent I printed out some simple Native American symbols from the internet and cut them out of felt. I sewed the symbols onto contrasting squares of felt. The felt colors that I used were red, yellow, brown and green. Obviously you could decorate your own fort any way you want to. I would say that painting it would be sort of difficult as the canvas is taut but not as much as you would like it to be for an easy painting surface.
We have had a few huge storms and the fort is still standing!
Here is the old swing set, just for comparison's sake.
This is from a longer post at http://smallworldland.blogspot.com/2013/08/turn-your-old-swing-set-into-...
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