It’s been super lovely out today, so I have been taking advantage of that fact. A bunch of yard work later and I was inspired. So I took the patio swing off the patio (dismantled and put it back together) and moved it down to the lawn.
I decided that I didn’t want the swing on the bare ground, so I scavenged our scrap pile and started to work piecing together a platform for it to sit on. It’s old cedar lumber so it should hold up nicely outside anyhow. I worked on it upside down initially..
And then I flipped it over to finish attaching center slats. After that was all done I went to work on the area I wanted to use. The ground was far from level and needed to be raked and smoothed out a bit so that it would sit right. That took a good half hour of raking and shoveling, but I got it about right finally. Then came the fun part..
I had to flip it end over end, as it was pretty darn heavy all put together. It took three solid flips, but I got it in place and was able to wiggle it around a bit to seat it in the dirt. I know it’s not the prettiest thing to look at. But it will do the job nicely, and that’s what counts.
Once I got done placing in the dirt I took a break and started playing with the canopy top for the swing. Too many wind storms had shredded the top, and the make shift one was not fairing any better, so I stretched chicken wire across it. It worked pretty well, although I was 1/2 foot off in my measurements and had to add a bit near the end. Bummed me out, as I had thought I’d taken into account how much it would need to stretch out, but miss judged apparently.
A few scratches and grumbles later though and I got the wire strung nicely on the frame and got it re mounted on top of the swing base. With that done I scooted the whole unit on to the platform I built and got it adjusted so it sat about right.
To help prevent it from sliding around on windy days I made some blocks that go around each foot. That should keep it in one place, unless it blows over of course. 
And here it is all set up. TaaaDaaaa..
The area is still a bit gicky on the eyes, but I plan on cleaning things up more and putting flower pots around it to liven the area up.
Plus, hopefully, we’ll be able to replace the fence and that will look 100% better.
Right now it’s a patched mess as we try to keep it from falling over. 
