| Author: Nicholas Phillips |
Looking for something to do this summer that will not only be fun, but a great benefit for your family? How about building your kids a backyard playground set?
Research has found that playgrounds are essential not only to a child's physical strength, but mental well-being. They help kids develop cognitive reasoning and problem-solving skills, and encourage them to use their imaginations and creativity. The actual building process offers some strong lessons tooteaching kids math, team building and carpentry skills.
Impressed by stories they read about the benefits of playground sets in parenting magazines, Tricia and Tony Perra of Barrington, N. H., decided to build one for their three kids, 4-year-old twins Aidan and Cole and 1-year-old Owen. They knew they wanted a wooden play set, one that would be sturdy and last a long time, but when they found out how much one would cost, they were shocked. Depending on the features they come with, wooden play sets typically cost between $2,000 and $3,000. 'While doing our research online, we came across a company that advertised a high-quality play set for under $1,000, and that's who we decided to go with,' says Tricia.
The company they found, Detailed Play Systems, has been around since 1998. Founder and owner, Karl Jessen, is a dad who had found himself in a similar predicament nearly a decade ago. 'When my boys were 4 and 1-and-a-half, I started looking into getting a backyard play set for them, and the prices were so high, I decided to build one myself,' he says.
When he started shopping around for supplies, Jessen realized the task wouldn't be as easy as he first thought. He had to go to different places to find the swings, slide, monkey bars, hardware and lumber. 'No one was selling materials that met my standards as a kit, and that gave me an idea.'
Jessen decided to go into the playground building business after realizing he had stumbled onto a niche that needed to be filled. 'Our business plan is designed to meet the needs of the cost-conscious consumer who wants to save approximately 50 percent off the cost of comparable prefabricated wooden forts and swing sets, without sacrificing the safety, size, quality, or features of their children's backyard playground,' says Jessen. 'The key to the savings is low overhead and the willingness of our customers to spend about eight hours time cutting and drilling hand-selected wood prior to starting to build something special for their children."
Detailed Play Systems provides its customers with the detailed plans needed to build their playground, the hardware, swings and slide. The wood is not included, but each kit contains a lumber purchase guide that shows exactly what wood needs to be purchased to build each configuration, giving parents the added benefits of being able to choose the type of wood, and to hand-select each piece if desired for quality control.
Kits from Detailed Play Systems range from $169 for a basic Jungle Fort Builder Kit to $900 and up for the works -- a dual fort plus swing set combination. The company's most popular kit, the Jungle Fort Swing Set kit, sells for $389. It features a large 6 foot by 6 foot fort with sandbox beneath, complete with inclined step ladder, gangplank ramp, and an attached 3-position swing set.
'The idea here is to help our customers provide quality playgrounds for their kids that won't break the bank. We are able to keep costs down because our customers don't have to pay for the labor overhead, machinery, or wood processing,' says Jessen. 'Shipping the wood alone can easily add $500 to the cost.'
If you decide to build a playground yourself, Jessen says you can count on the project taking about a weekend to complete. He estimates about eight hours for the wood processing, which includes cutting the wood to size and drilling the holes for the bolts, and another eight hours for assembly.
'We decided to build rather than buy because we knew putting the playground together ourselves as a family would make a bigger impact on the kids,' says Perra. 'The twins were just 3 when the project began last year. They helped out by handing us screws and the accessories as we called for them.' |
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