We just recently purchased a new home and the backyard ended up having a dreadful slope. Although it was frustrating at first, there are actually a lot of cool things you can do with slopes. One idea I had was to create a rock climbing wall for my kids using recycled pallets. This project took one weekend. Check out our building process below.
I first prepared each pallet so that they weren't so rough as kids would be touching/walking on them. I sanded each board on the front side using my electric sander. After I sanded them, I painted on a coat of clear gloss polyurethane to help protect the wood from the elements. (I didn't get a picture of this step :-( Whoops).
Then we laid the rocks in a random pattern to figure out where we wanted each one to go. Then my husband drilled them all in with the included hardware. These were the rocks I purchased from Amazon.
We laid playground mulch on the slope to go under our pallets. Then we created a frame of sort to attach the pallets to. We used treated lumber since this will be outside. The ledges on the top and bottom have "legs" essentially that we buried into the ground for stability. Then we attached the long 16' boards to each ledge. Then we screwed each pallet to the long boards.
And here is the finished wall. What do you think?
Kid approved. :-)
