Windsor II Playset

My son recently turned one so we wanted to get him a playset similar to the one he has at daycare. He enjoys being outside and loves to swing in the swing there so it was an easy choice for a big gift.

The wife and I went to Toys R Us, saw their selection of playsets, and decided on the Windsor II by Adventure Playsets. A new model was coming out so we ended up getting roughly 40% off the initial price. Sweet! It's cedar, 12 feet high, 16 feet long and much nicer than my first apartment.

In case you have never assembled one of these, here are some tips:

1. You will need a very, very good friend to help you with the assembly. Barring that, get a friend that you don't mind losing. Do not use your neighbor or spouse because this is going to go badly and you will never hear the end of it.

2. The guy who sold you the kit told you it should take you and a buddy about 8 hours to put this together. Remember: he works there and has assembled about a hundred of these. Also, he is a filthy, stinking liar.

3. Make sure before you leave the store you get an affidavit signed in triplicate that you have all the boxes of parts AND they all go to the same kit. Otherwise you will be spending much of the day searching for things that don't necessarily exist and driving back to the store to get the things that do exist, but exist in the store instead of your driveway because they forgot to load a box onto your truck.

4. Now that you (theoretically) have all the parts, get on your computer and print out the instruction manual because the one that came in the box is not for the kit you have. This is a 67Meg, 40-page PDF, so why not take a 30 minute break while your $50 inkjet printer deals with this.

5. Finish your break and unjam the printer because it failed in the middle of page 3. Good thing, too, because the first two pages were blank since you needed a new ink cartridge anyway. Insert the new cartridge and resume printing.

6. Open the 6 huge boxes of parts and marvel at the hundreds of similar yet not quite identical pieces of completely unlabeled wood. This might be a good time to fetch the 5 sheets of instruction manual that have printed and load more paper in the printer because nobody else in the damn house remembers to fill the damn paper tray ever.

7. Open the box with the hardware. Question the wisdom, motivation, and parentage of the designers of the kit, regarding their need to use 12 different lengths of wood screw for a single project.

8. Using the freshly printed manual, attempt to sort and stack the wooden parts by type. A space about the size and flatness of an abandoned ice rink should do nicely. Unless you are Jay Leno, your garage is too small.

9. Proceed to Step 1 of the manual. Since you can't do number 8 above and none of the pieces are labeled (and you thought this was going to be like assembling that entertainment center you did a few years back, didn't you?) locating these pieces will take 30 expletive-filled-I-told-you-I-just-looked-through-that-box minutes.

10. Are you sure you have the right pieces? Are you really sure? I'm just sayin', because some of the parts differ only by 1/4 of an inch in length or by the location of a screw hole. Discover you have the wrong pieces and search some more for the right ones.

11. Make sure you have 3 or 4 tape measures. They won't help because they will all be misplaced almost immediately, but at least it increases the odds that you will stumble upon them during a future step or discover them with the lawnmower later.

12. Please tell me you have a cordless drill with multiple batteries and a screwdriver attachment. If you don't, the best thing you can do right now is just commit seppuku with your Phillips to avoid the torture of mounting over 1,000 woodscrews by hand.

13. About 20 hours into the project (about halfway) gage the mood of your friend. Tense but polite silence or the occasional muttered obscenity are both perfectly normal at this point, but try to avoid eye contact just in case you are closer to their breaking point than you think.

14. Did you know a piece of lumber that is called out as 1" x 4" x 48" actually measures 3/4"x 3 1/2"x 48" for arcane sawmill reasons? No? You should, because everyone else in the whole wide world does, apparently. Also, they know that 5/4 actually means 1 inch. Phone your father about this critical gap in your man-knowledge while you disassemble the affected parts of the playhouse.

15. About 30 hours into the project, get tired of pre-drilling hundreds and hundreds of holes and adjusting factory mis-cut boards with the table saw. Have a philosophical discussion with your buddy (assuming he/she is still there) covering topics such as "In this crazy world, who can say what is truly load-bearing and what is only kind of load-bearing?" and "Safety? Bah. In our day, playsets were designed to actively maim children, and we turned out just fine."

16. Now that the main structure is done, assemble the slide. At this point you will have run out of swear words just when you need them the most, so you will have to improvise. Any sort of gibberish will do as long as you go loud and guttural and primal enough to worry the neighbor's dogs.

There! All done! It looks great, it is really solid, but it is just another random big thing in the landscape to a one-year-old, isn't it? Oh, sure, he points at it and says "dis!" but he might be saying anything at all from "What is this new thing?" to "I'm worried the floor joists are not up to code."

But I choose to think he is saying "Thanks, dad!" and that totally makes the effort worthwhile.