Rock Pit

When Mason was about two years old, we went to this amazing children's museum, that had this huge rock pit area. Basically like a giant sandbox but filled with pea-size gravel. It had all these dump trucks and other construction trucks to load and dump rocks. I loved it! Mason loved it! I decided for his 6th birthday to create this rock pit for him. I wanted a box formation to keep most of the rocks in, I wanted seating areas for the kids to sit on, and tubes for the kids to pour rocks into, where they would fill up their trucks. Some may ask… why not sand?!? A couple reasons… I can't stand when kids came in all sandy, in and out, in and out…. Also, before Mason was born, Kaylie actually got a sand box for her birthday… you know the cute red crab ones, with a lid. Kaylie ended up getting sand mites from the sand box. I had heard of sand mites from when Ben & I lived in Florida near the beach, but never knew they could also be in play sand. So, we got rid of it.
Plus, I think dump trucks go with rocks… and have you ever played in pea gravel rocks?? Its so soothing, soft (they are all smooth, curved rocks)… they feel great on your feet!
Because I am thrifty, I wanted to try to use pallets… great free wood! Are rock pit took about 12 to 13 pallets. The rock bit measures 9x9 feet. There are four pallets on the bottom (the floor), Two and a half pallets for the tube wall area, then the rest where cut to size to make the border. We did go buy nice wood for top edge of the boarder walls. Its 8" wide, so this makes the "seating" area of the pit. After we put the flooring in we also bought two pieces of thin particle board for a more solid flooring (on top of the four pallets). It took 34 bags of pea gravel, and that's at 5" of rock in height. I used decking stain to paint the wood, this will make it last a lot longer. Used PVC piping for the tubes.

The other little handy project for it was I wanted to provide some shade for the rock pit. I decided to take a whisky barrel planter, placed a pvc pipe in the center, and filled it a fourth with cement. This amount of cement provided stability for the pvc pipe and for the planter not to be blown over when the umbrella was in it. The pvc pipe holds the umbrella when we have it out, and allows me to remove the umbrella to put up for the winter, or during storms. Then had cute yellow flowers in the planter!