We are shortly going to convert part of our lawn area into a dedicated play area for the kids
We already have a trampoline and have a new swing set coming for Christmas (just a small 3xSwing wide one) and also already have a plastic climbing gym, and a clam shell full of sand, and a plastic cubby house. The area will be about 4m x 5m. Currently there is grass where we plan to set it up, we are going to put a border around (we have some existing treated pine sleepers to use) and were thinking of using either fine bark (so its the softest possible), or rubber matting (from Bunnings etc) or even looking into the playground soft base stuff (but thinking this will be very expensive)
Any ideas? Recommendations?
The Bark and Rubber Matting are the cheaper options, but problematic with weeds coming through
Also - any idea's what to use to kill off the grass? We plan to put some type of weed matting over it too.
I also had a great idea to get a large sheet of the waterproof plasterboard and attach it to the fence and paint it with blackboard paint Also put a shade sail over part of it, What other cool idea's can you throw at me that will look cool/funky and entice the kids to play outside? We have a boy and a girl
I think it's a great idea. I would like to do something similar for our kids. Just need more time to plan something. I especially like the idea of the blackboard paint. No real advice, but round up kills pretty much anything.
We looked into that playground matting and it was soooooo expensive so we have a combination of white sand and real grass. Don't use fake grass - it gets very hot.
The girls have a flower garden, fruit trees, strawberry pots and a couple of herbs that are theirs to do with what they will, and they spend a lot of time "gardening" and "cooking" with their herbs, setting their table with flower arrangemets etc.
They also have lots of stuff like balls, totem tennis, scooters, bikes, soccer nets, big snakes and ladders mats, paving chalk etc
Killing grass - better off I think to dig it out, then put weed mat down.
We are in the process of making toadstools for the garden for DD. They look pretty cool and DD is smitten with them. Ive also seen a really cool little racetrack made with old tyres and a small amount of cement (hope to do that soon too). Sounds like its going to be an awesome area!
One of the bestest things that i ever saw for a play area was in this house that we were inspecting to buy a few years ago where they had put up some wood board thingo at kid height on the fence and had drilled an old wall telephone on it, an old computer keyboard and a whole bunch of locks with the chain thingos etc. This is probably more suited to pre primary school ages, but a cool and largely inexpensive idea!
We are getting artificial grass for our side area. There was a ccc that re did their area so sold us the old stuff really cheap. Great for what we needed
Backyard Play Area Ideas
Also put a shade sail over part of it, What other cool idea's can you throw at me that will look cool/funky and entice the kids to play outside? We have a boy and a girl
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