2021-04-30

Our backyard took a couple of evolutionary leaps

Over the years, our backyard has gone from being a child’s playground to a next-level outdoor gym that everyone can enjoy. Oh, and we have bunnies.

Yes, bunnies. Their names are Wakame (female, brown and white) and Alfred (male, black and white) and we keep them in a hutch that my daughter and I built last September. This was built from the wood that was still halfway good from our old swingset. We had to take that swingset down after almost 8 years because time and weather had taken their toll on (most of) the wood. When we noticed the wear-and-tear had made the swingset less than safe for the kids (who were getting bigger, heavier and swinging with more force than ever before), it was time for a change.

Why now?

It isn’t just because of the pandemic, but it definitely helped to get the ball rolling. Thankfully, my brother-in-law was here one day and saw that the swingset was not stable anymore while my son was swinging on it. I tried to fix it, but the wood just wasn’t going to hold anymore. Then, one thought led to another and I figured it made more sense to replace it with something that we can all enjoy and make beneficial use of for years to come.

So we had to leave childish things behind…

(Here is the swingset with the palisade I built as a fort for the kids, pre-pandemic.)

Interestingly, while It took 4 adults three and a half days to build it, one adult and two children were able to take it down in three hours. Go figure.

For the sake of scale, here are all the screws that I took out of the swingset - and a lot more were still rusted into it.

A lot of wood components that we used later in the hutch.

The concrete foundations almost all went to the dump. I kept two for outdoor weightlifting.

Negotiating for an upgrade
The swingset’s obligatory successor would have to be sustainable and more durable. In the course of my research, I found Tolymp, a Germany-based manufacturer that sources its steel from Italy. What’s great about these is, the kids can use them well into adulthood and I can use it now, too (which I do, a couple times a week). I first got the kids on board and then we presented our case to my wife, who had nothing against the rig, but she (and the kids) seized this opportunity to go for gold: the rabbits. I agreed and here we are.

It was a tough job that two very good friends helped me with and we were under time constraints, so I couldn’t take too many pictures, but you get the idea…

Pretty nice, huh?

But where should the rabbits go?
My daughter had a flash of brilliance before we started taking the old swingset down: Use the wood that is still good to build the rabbit hutch! That was brilliant and totally fit into my desire to live more sustainably than not (and it saved me several hundreds of euros in lumber).

I was almost completely on my own (the kids helped a lot, actually) building the hutch.

To be honest, though, the toughest part was figuring out where to put the first two pieces of wood… the rest grew by itself out of the material we had and my own head.

And about 17 trips to the hardware/DIY store.

But it all paid off in the end.

And what about sleep?
I used my old Ikea nightstand and some leftover lumber and rubber pads from another project to build them a sozy bed they can sleep in while inside the two-story hutch. I don’t like to throw around phrases like “the lap of luxury” but this is pretty close.

This is the finished view.

Their bed inside the two-story closed hutch and the ramp to the upper level on the right.

We can also remove the back wall to make for easy cleaning.

The rubber pads keep the removable rear wall from sliding off.