Sandbox

I debated writing about this. After all, it isn't about hacking code. Instead, it is about hacking together a sandbox. It is about making stupid design choices and then over engineering "solutions" to those problems. It is a cautionary tale about doing the design right from the start and sometimes "free" lumber costs a lot in time and effort.

So, I wanted to make a 4'x4' (just a little over 1m x 1m) sandbox for my 2 year old. He loves sand in the parks and I wanted him to have a place to play in the back yard. My wife suggested we just get one of those turtles, but I wouldn't hear of it. After all, I had a bunch of 2x4's in the garage. Why pay good money for a plastic turtle when I could just build a simple box out of the 2x4's.

I wanted a 4" depth of sand, so I figured I'd have to stack the 2x4's. Rather than just buy a couple of 2x8's and bolt them together, I had to use 2x4's. Of course, I had planned on stacking them, but what I hadn't planned well was how to do it. I wound up with small 2x2's as wooden cleats. So I get the box put together. It was fairly straight forward to do this. I connected the two halves of the box with short 2x2's. I proudly showed it to my wife who immediately said "those sharp edges sticking out look dangerous." She was talking about the 2x2's. Once I saw it from her point of view, I realized she was right.

Now, rather than spend $8.00 on 2 2x6's or 2x8's for the box, I spent $9.86 on 12 6" ceramic coated screws to hold the box together. I then drilled holes and recessed the heads (why? I don't know, just seemed like a good idea even though they were on the bottom). I drove the screws in and removed the 2x2 cleats. The box looked great! And I even managed to add the trip onto another trip to a near by store, so I didn't blow a ton of time and gas getting them. That was luck, pure and simple, since usually for things like this I'm making another trip...

I then went to put it where we'd agreed and realized I had no bottom. I had to do something about a bottom. I thought I'd just use some of the yard fabric I had left over from all my landscaping chores. Turns out that I left all that at my old house. So instead I took and old tarp with a tear in it and cut a 4'x4' section and laid it on the ground and put the sandbox on top of it. I then filled it with the play sand I'd been lugging around in my car for a week while I finished the box. Time will tell if I secured things in place well enough or not. I was planning on going to the store to get a bunch of rebar to drive into the ground to keep the box from moving, but I realized just how crazy this was getting and I just made a couple of wooden wedges to hold the thing in place. We'll see how that works out, but they are likely good enough, and were scrap anyway...

In the end, I spent 4 hours building this box. While a turtle would have saved me a bunch of time, and would likely have cost about the same as what I spent on wood, nails and screws (all but the last one had already been purchased, but I did pay for them). I'd have been done in 30 minutes. Of course, I wouldn't have gotten to use the power tools, and I really like the idea of building things for my son. I put the sand in tomorrow and we'll see how well he likes the box.

So, am I crazy? Did I go overboard on trying to save a nickle only to cost myself a ton of time? Maybe. Did I have fun putting it together? You bet! Was it worth it? Yes...