Thursday, March 7, 2019

Mini Woody

I just finished a little "woody" (wood rock climbing wall) under the stairs in the basement.  I made one in my parent's house growing up, so I thought this would be cool.  The ceiling is pretty low, so I don't get more then 2 or 3 moves out of it, but it's better than nothing.  I made the vertical side wall for the kids: I can't even fit on that thing.  I just have to stand up and I've scaled it.

I stained the wall the same color as the stairs, so it matches.  The holds are all made of scrap 2x4s that I had from the construction.  I still have some finishing touches left and I'd like to make more holds, but it's functional already.

Pre-wall

Furring strips: these are attached to the studs and act as a spacer so that the bolts for the holds don't go through the drywall.  The ceiling was tricky: I wasn't planning on doing anything there, so I didn't really support it that well.  Had to get some long screws and anchor to the floor joist up above.  Not the most elegant solution....

Me prepping the plywood.  I drilled holes in a grid of 4" spacing.  I didn't expect to have that density, but found online that it was better to go too dense rather than not dense enough.  Ran out of T-nuts and had to get more.  The work was in the cold garage, so I had to bundle up.  I was trying to hurry through, so some of the cuts and holes aren't as clean as I would have liked them to be, but it all gets covered with holds anyway so I guess it's ok.


After I hung the walls.  I still need to do some secondary staining of the wood, but otherwise looks good.  


The kids were biting at the bit to start climbing, so I really had to make the holds fast!  I buzzed through a bunch of them in a couple of hours.  I've gone back and worked on some of them since, mostly making them a little more interesting with some curves, asymmetries, etc.


Cora can make it to the top!


Here's my wall at my parents house: the same concept except no sidewall and I had a fully horizontal section.  Also, KT won't let me put stickers on this one:)


Overall, it probably took me a couple full Saturday's worth of time spread out over 3 weeks.  Not a bad timeline for a fun little project like this one.

1 comment:

Blogful said...

Good memories of that wall in your old house. Nice work on this one. Totes profesh.