Whenever Dan and I would talk about our dream home it always had a big shed stock full of outdoor gear and a rock climbing wall – this was almost a joke since we didn’t really believe it would happen . . .but we have some friends who have a rock climbing wall in their basement . . . and Dan and I realized our garage is 12 feet tall. Plenty of space for a rock climbing wall. So we decided it would make an awesome family present for Christmas. By our preliminary calculations, we thought the project would cost 300-400 dollars, but the final, completely finished product was well over that original guess. (I am kind of glad I didn’t know that at the time, because I’m not sure I would have agreed to it.)
And now that it is finished . . . It is AWESOME! Whenever I open the garage to park the car I think to myself, “We are so awesome!” Yup! Awesome!
The kids favorite part of the wall is that they have their own hide out behind the slanted wall. We decided to be very strict and make it so they could only access it by climbing up with a harness on, but that just didn’t seem practical when both boys are up there yelling that they have to go pee and each waiting to get the harness on and belayed down one at a time. This seriously happened more than once. So Dan built a ladder for easy access. Below their hideout are two shelves for skis. So instead of having a trampoline or pool as potential hazards we have a climbing wall and a hideout 10 feet off the concrete floor. Don’t worry we are still amazingly safety conscious and enforcing our strict rules. I still think we must be slightly crazy. Love it!
It was so much work. Here is the process through photos. You don’t get to see us do math until our minds hurt to get the angle right or get high gluing T-nuts in, or grumble when our math wasn’t quite right or how many times we went to Lowes but you get the picture. A special thanks to Jon Messina who helped lift most the boards up and my sister Anna for helping me complete the wave along the bottom and many others who helped!
