Our play area has been getting a little makeover.  Over the past couple of weeks we have slowly been working on making the play area a little cushier for our kiddos.

When we had the play area put in by the landscaping company that installed our sprinkler system we had a large wooden swingset.  The landscaper suggested wood chip for under the swingset.   It worked great and was never an issue.

Until we got rid of the swing set.  We put in our sandbox last year (you can see how we did that HERE) and added the shade sail.  We loved both of those additions.

Here is the problem.

Wood chip and sandbox don’t really mix.

Plus, the wood chips get stuck in thier sandals and poke thier little feet.  Really annoying!

Add into that the fact that esthetics really get to me and this area just looked a bit bleek and ugly.  It had to be dealt with.

We went to town raking up the wood chip a couple of weeks ago.  We decided we wanted the grass to go right up to the sandbox.  Which meant we had to add more sprinkler heads.  Which meant we had to pull up the wood boarder around the play area.  Do you hear the “If you give a mouse a cookie” situation we have going on here.  One thing meant doing another which meant doing yet another.  And while we are at it why don’t we add some shrubs and drip lines?

Our afternoon project became a two week work fest!

Here is where we are so far.

We put pavers around the sandbox, in order to give it an area that was easy to sweep the sand back into the box easily.  That seemed to be logical in our minds.

We made a paver path to the playhouse and a cute little porch for the playhouse.  We even put some old pavers that we had set aside on the inside of the playhouse to give it a more solid foundation.

Not beautiful, but functional.

Then we added sprinkler heads in the play area that were not thier before.  This was a challenge because finding the right heads is hard when you already have a bunch of sprinklers in one zone of your system.  We had to get the low pressure ones in order for all the sprinklers to work.  They are better for the environment anyways, from what I hear.  They waste less water.  They are more expensive to buy though.  It was worth it when they all popped up on the first shot with plenty of pressure.

Finally we were able to lay our sod!

Here is a picture of our play area as it was being worked on.

The sod is getting over the shock nicely and growing in with our current grass almost seemlessly.

I will post more pictures as the area is finished, but for now here is our work in progress.

Here are some quick before and afters.

 See how uneven the ground was around the playhouse.  That front door was hard to open because it didn’t have a flat surface.  Thank goodness for pavers!

Here are the progress pictures.

We still need to do a little more work, like fill in the rest of the area that had wood chip with trail mix to match our patio extension.  That way it all pulls together a bit and looks less like an afterthought.  Check out the trail mix patio HERE.

We also plan on planting some cute miniature cypress type trees in each of the wooden barrel pots on each side of the playhouse.

I would love to create some sort of artwork for the fence in that area, any suggestions would be very welcome!

I think some children’s seating might be nice.

For now, I am just happy that the sprinklers are working and the grass is living!

xoxo