How to make a children's sandbox with a lid and a bench with your own hands

From the article before you, you will learn how to make a sandbox with a lid with your own hands. Thanks to this lid, the place for children’s games will be protected from cats seeking to use it as a toilet, but at the same time water (rain or from the sprayer) will freely get inside, preventing the sand from drying out too much. The latter aspect is very important not only for maintaining the consistency of the material ideal for the construction of sandpipers and sand castles. Dry sand easily rises into the air and poses a risk to human health when it enters the lungs. This design has an open bottom, and (if you decide to use a barrier for weeds) the sand in it will remain wet for a long time.

The lid of our sandbox, in addition to maintaining the cleanliness of the sand, has another very useful function. During children's games, she is able to miraculously transform into two comfortable benches with backrests, on which mom and dad can comfortably sit, watching their baby play.

Necessary materials and tools

As a material for the construction of the sandbox, I recommend using wood that is resistant to weathering, decay and insects and at the same time does not exude toxic fumes, like commercially available plastic boxes.

DO NOT use particleboard sandboxes and preservative treated wood to build sandboxes. It contains formaldehyde and other harmful chemicals that protect the wood from rot and insects. Making a sandbox out of such materials is equivalent to simply giving your baby a sandwich with arsenic, blindfold him and sending him to play outside ...

What you probably already have (if not, you should buy it immediately):

• Cordless drill / driver. I highly recommend the Hitachi brand tool. I bought a similar kit and use it regularly. This tiny drill is capable of anything. It has a shock mechanism and therefore does not require special effort when working. Li-ion batteries last almost forever and charge almost instantly.
• 3 mm drill for drilling in boards of guide holes to prevent splitting of wood.
• A circular saw. I do not have a Hitachi saw, although I would use it with great pleasure. I just don’t have to cut enough to justify its price. I use a simpler tool.
• Construction stapler.It will come in handy for attaching material that inhibits weed growth.
• The square. This tool for cutting straight lines and building right angles will undoubtedly be very useful in the implementation of this project.
• Pencil.

This is how our sandbox will look when closed.

Sandbox Building

Before you start building a children's sandbox with a cover, make drawings. I deliberately did not cite my schemes, drafts and calculations here. It is possible that you will want to make a sandbox of other sizes, and then my drawings can only confuse you. Carefully read the article, pick up paper, pencil and draw a sandbox that suits your needs. But after this, you can take up the tools.

Begin work with the procurement of boards and bars of the desired length. When cutting boards, take into account that the cutting width of the circular saw is ~ 3 mm. Although this quantity is insignificant, it should be taken into account in order to minimize errors and inaccuracies.

When all the wooden elements are sawn, you can proceed with the assembly. Remember to drill the guide holes before screwing in the screws.

Build a sandbox box with a square base assembly. To do this, I used boards with a length of 120 cm fastening them in the corners with four 5x10 cm bars 28 cm high. Use a square to make sure that all corners are really straight (or you will end up with a shaky and curved box). Fasten a row of 2.5x15 cm boards along the perimeter of the square, screwing two screws at each end of the board. Repeat the operation by “encircling” the bar-stands with the second (top) row of boards. As a result, you get a fairly solid construction. If all your measurements were correct, then the box should not be completely square (its sides will be 120 and 125 cm), since the boards of the short side overlap the ends of the boards of the long side.

After you have finished making the box, you can fix the material that prevents the growth of weeds. Do not pull it too tight, leave a slight slack, otherwise it may break - uneven ground and the weight of the sand will affect. (The photo shows not a sandbox, but two flower beds, but there are no fundamental differences in the laying of weed protection for these structures.)

Now you can do the manufacture of the cover. Sort cooked 2.5x10 cm boards according to their surface quality. Place the roughest planed closer to the edge, the smoothest - closer to the center. In this case, lay each board with the smoother side down (towards the sand). Each half of the cover will consist of three pairs of boards.

Attach the extreme pair of boards to the previously assembled square box with screws, remembering to pre-drill the guide holes with a 3 mm drill. Do not tighten the screws too tight so that the wood does not crack. Between the boards, I advise you to leave 1 cm gap.

The next pair of boards will serve as a seat, so carefully sand the lower side of them with sandpaper. The seat will be connected to the boards rigidly fixed to the box by means of metal hinges, and the boards will be connected by three short bars 2.5 cm thick and 7.5 cm wide (the same bars will subsequently prevent the back of the seat from tipping forward). To better understand the above, take a look at the first photos posted on this page.

Put the assembled seat on a pair of planks fixed to the box, and place a pencil between them. The latter will form the optimum clearance for the hinge. Fasten the hinges with self-tapping screws and raise and lower the seat several times to make sure that everything works. To fix the seat (and then its back), you can use not two, but three loops, evenly distributing them along the length of the board.

And finally, the last pair of boards will serve as the back of the bench. It will also be attached with hinges. Fasten the loops (opposite the first set) as shown in the photographs. In this case, use only one back board so far.

Now you can install and fix the last, sixth board. To do this, you need 2.5x7.5 cm bars 45 cm long. They will have a dual function - to fasten the back boards together and prevent it from tipping over backwards. One end of each bar should be aligned with the edge of the last (sixth) board, while the second end will close the second board by ~ 4 cm. Make sure that the bars are perpendicular to the lid boards and that all clearances are aligned. Attach the bars with self-tapping screws (only to the fifth and sixth boards!).

After I finished work and my child started playing in the new sandbox, I realized that she had one design flaw. A child who rises from the sand to sit on a bench will inevitably grab the top of his back to help himself. This leads to an increase in the load on the screws fastening the hinges of the back to the seat. I think that even if I used longer screws to fasten the loops and somehow could screw them in without violating the surface of the board (and this is not an easy task), the loops would still break out over time. I found a solution to this problem - you need to make small wooden rotating latches that will rigidly hold the back in an upright position.

As I realized my idea, you can see in the photographs. You need to install such locking devices on each bar holding the back (i.e., two latches on each cover).

So my sandbox with a lid and a bench is ready, the construction scheme of which, I hope, has become clear to you. Now you can do it yourself with your own hands a place where your child will be very pleased to transform into an architect and builder, even if only sand castles.

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