Payton & the Sandbox

As I mentioned in my beach post, Payton loves playing in the sand. Lindsey and I decided we had to get her a sandbox. At first, we were going to buy one, but the prices were fairly high and looking at them, it seemed like I could build one. I found a video that looked pretty easy and decided that I might need some help. I asked my brother and he said “sure.”

Adam came over one day and we knocked this thing out in a few hours. We barely made any mistakes at all. Honesty, he did most of the work. I just handed him boards and screws. He did a great job.

Payton was crying out of sheer joy. Okay, maybe not. I cannot remember why she was crying. It had nothing to do with the sandbox.

Anyways, the next part of the job was sanding it down to prepare for paint. I hate sanding. While I was looking in the basement for some sandpaper, I noticed an electric sander. It was one of the tools I got from dad’s garage. I need to be honest here, I had no clue how to actually load the sandpaper. Fortunately, YouTube has videos for everything. Anyways, the part I was dreading was made a million times easier with the sander. I knocked out the sanding in like thirty minutes.

Yeah, pictures of wood sanded are pretty much as boring as you can imagine.

Now comes the fun part: painting! I actually like painting. I mean, I do not want to start a paint business or paint our house anytime soon, but sitting there painting something small like this is fairly relaxing.

I went with white and then wanted to paint her name on the one side in purple. I bought a stencil and gave it a go. I absolutely hated it.

The font was not terrible, but since it was small, I decided on “Payton Marie.” Unfortunately, the “I” was ugly as shit. I consulted with Adam and Lindsey, and they agreed that it sucked. So I painted over it and decided to just free-hand it.

I definitely liked it more. The final part was putting on the landscape fabric.

I suck with a staple gun. I missed like six times. Anyways, once the fabric was attached, Lindsey and I moved the sandbox into the yard. We just need to get the sand.

You may be wondering why I did not paint anything on the other side. And well, I have a plan for that side. I figure if/when we have another kid, I can put his/her name on that side. DO NOT FREAK OUT PEOPLE, THIS IS NOT SOME SUBTLE WAY TO ANNOUNCE A SECOND KID. Granted, we are trying, but no success yet.

Anyways, I just want to thank my brother for the help. Also, if anyone is planning on building one, I would suggest painting it first. Or at least, painting it after you cut all the boards.