How cool is this slide set we made our kids for $87?! No kidding, that is ALL we paid! I will explain…
We want to put a sandbox underneath so we will have to pay for the that and the sand but you can’t beat it! This is the breakdown.
85% of the wood: FREE. Typically you use pressure treated wood, but we had a friend who needed to get rid of some regular non treated wood so we took it all. It was an old loft bed. The other wood, we did buy treated and we payed $11 for the upright slats at the top (non-painted ones as you need to let it weather before you paint. We bought treated wood to be buried in the ground for $8 (unable to see it in the picture).
We found these slides used on craigslist for $50 (for both).
We did have to buy 3 bags of quick dry cement for $15. It would have been $5 cheaper for the slow dry, but we did not want to wait that long.
We went to buy paint as we needed to get something on the untreated wood, and fast! We went paint shopping and paint is expensive for external paint. The cheapest we could find (after mail in rebate) was $20 per can. We headed over to ACE hardware and found some oil based paint for $1 a can, yes you read that right, $1.00! We bought 3 cans so we ended up spending $87 on the entire slide!
Of course we did all the work but it was a great workout so we burned calories on top of it.
The reason the paint was so cheap is that by law, the oil based paint will not be sold anymore after December, as it is said to be “bad for the environment.” That is what I was told at ACE. We needed to use oil based because we were painting this outside and oil based keeps the wood bees off better.
ACE also said that all paint stores had to get rid of their oil based paints and they were being sold dirt cheap! This worked out for us big time!
Anyway, there you have it and the kids love it! The best part is that it looks like we spent a lot more on it. We would have chose to paint with a brown however, we could not be picky on the color if we wanted cheap paint. I do not remember why they wouldn’t but they would not color the paint for us. I kind of like the white and gray with the yellow so I am OK with that. Oh and we have barely used 2/3 gallon of white and 1/2 gallon of gray. We still have a whole gallon of white we have not opened so we are good for a good extra coat every year for the next few years!
I hope you enjoyed this post! Have a great day!
Peace!
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Very nice! We built ours too and have used slides that we found or were given to us.
OneMommy:
Absolutely. Anywhere that sells paint has to get rid of it, Shermin Williams, Sears, ACE etc. Go get it now!
Nice! We want to build a wood set eventually; they are soooo expensive we will probably make one up ourselves. Maybe we should stock up on paint now???
Don't you just love getting a deal?
I bet the kids just love the slide… I would put a kiddie pool at one end and slide down it myself…. weeeeeeee….. LOL