By NICOLE CARTRETTE
Staff Writer

When I was growing up, I may have had one of those aluminum swing sets – likely an old, rusty one that first belonged to my older brother.

Our tree house consisted of some scrap boards from my grandpa’s shop and a plywood platform – its walls and roof were left to be constructed in our imaginations.

Both were fabulous – better than good enough.

I envisioned the same for my little one until my grandpa brought a desperate pile of wood to life last week.

It had been there for months – two lonely boxes of randomly sized nuts, bolts and screws, along with the rest of a rejected swing set someone else returned to the store.

I proudly became the owner of it at one-third the price.

It was a purchase, however, that was going to cost me dearly.

“Who’s going to put that thing together?” my husband asked.

He looked less than amused reading through the 50-page construction manual with its hundreds of parts.

It may as well have come with a red warning label that screamed, “This will require more patience than you have ever had and more time than you have to spare!”

For months leading up to the construction, it was just a waste of money taking up space in the garage.

It would only be matter of time before I would prove my purchase a wise one. (Okay, okay – I called in some back up.)

It took days, hours, a trip to the hardware store, a little creativity and resourcefulness, but in the end, a swing set that was missing a few pieces would become whole if it was the last thing my 81-year-old grandpa did for his first great grandchild.

(Note: my grandpa is no regular 80-something year old. He can hold his own with most 50 or 60 year-olds. This task was just another opportunity to prove it).

Though there was no reconstruction of the Biltmore going on in our yard, in my2-year-old’s eyes, her eight-foot fort, slide and swing was just as grand.

In years to come, it will likely become weathered, but it should last and will make a great hand-me-down swing.

So what if we had to add a piece of a two-by-four here or a few screws there.

So what if the screws holding the tarp on the fort vary in shape and have mismatched washers and bolts –such inconsistencies give this swing set character.

It’s the kind of character that comes with something your grandpa shed a little sweat over when he really didn’t have to and the kind you can’t hire a stranger to assemble for you.

It has almost as much charm as one of those swing sets I had or as much imagination as tree house without walls.

Perhaps that too is the way Kaylee will remember it one day. Maybe one day she can look back on and think it was fabulous – better than good enough.