20 Best Wood For Playset (2022 Updated)

Our playset turned out great! Our son loves it. My husband and I put it together ourselves. I’d say it took approximately 12-15 hours total and that was over the span of 3 days. We did spend 8 hours straight on it the first day and got the bulk of the building parts put together.

My husband then finished the details and roof by himself over the next two days after work. The instructions were easy to follow but we did have a little issue starting off. We didn’t realize/notice the many different holes in each piece and didn’t have them all in the right directions at first.

We did end up having to take apart some of the main framing pieces to flip the boards around. It’s super cute, super sturdy, we all try to fit in the upper house part and it’s strong enough to hold us! Lol.

Happy with our purchase!.

I really enjoyed construction the canyon creek play set for our kids. It was a long process but it’s finally done. Did it myself with some instructional guidance from my wife and it probably took 25 hours over the course of 5 weeks.

Work, life, etc got in the way but the BILT app is so helpful and the steps are not very extensive. Not many tools are truly needed to get this done. I used my power screwdriver/drill the entire time it felt like.

3 swing system is great for young toddlers who struggle with sharing swing time.

I bought this a couple of weeks ago for my 8 and 6 year olds. My husband assembled it himself with the kids’ “help” in an afternoon (with lots of breaks and kid-related distractions). It’s nice and solid and the ground anchors hold it steady even when the kids are swinging in sync (they represent about 100lbs together).

It says up to 12yrs old, but I know some tall 12-year-olds and I don’t think anyone much over 5ft would be able to swing to exciting heights after raising the seats to accommodate their legs. Still, it’s a good backyard size and should be plenty tall for my kids for a few years.

The only reason I’m giving it 4 and not 5 stars is because the instructions aren’t very clear and hardware isn’t labelled well, so you really have to study the pages carefully and doublecheck what bolts to use, which way to stand the beams, etc.

Fortunately, it really is a simple frame to assemble, so that frustration is fairly minor. Tip: Make sure you have a level to check verticality of the upright before drilling the side wood braces to it.

Definitely Not worth the money. Not sturdy or stable. Needed additional hardware to make it usable.

It is NOT easy to put this together! They should mark the wood pieces, front, back, top, and bottom as well as the numbers. Videos would help too. The slide? OMG, the slide. The pieces do NOT fit together unless you have eight hands! When you finally get two pieces together each and then try to put the circle/tubes together, one hole is bigger than the other.

So you have to have someone shrink one and expand the other in order to line up the holes. then. I counted 7 holes on the tube and there are only 6 holes on the braces. what the heck?? THIS IS A NIGHTMARE TO PUT TOGETHER! You are better off hiring someone to do it from home depot or something.

Make sure they know what they are doing.

Easy to put together, though not perfect wood pieces. Took 12 hours with 2 ppl. For price, should’ve been more premadecomplete panelssections. Kids love it!

We have 5 kids and were looking for a set with lots of features so all kids could be entertained at once. Extensively research and KidKraft products seemed very well reviewed and after service good which is important to us.

Assembly is what it is- time consuming and painful but worth it. Kids are thrilled, we are happy, and the neighborhood kids are happy. % starts no hesitation.

We bought this last month after looking at several sets. My kids are a little older so we wanted a bigger set for them. After one of the sales associates greatly misquoted how much it was for delivery/set up (he said it was between $100-200 but was $600 just for set up), we did it ourselves.

Let me just say my daughter can play on this every day for the rest of her life and this still wouldn’t be worth it. Several of the pieces did not have pre-drilled holes where they should and several more had holes that didn’t line up.

What might have been the worst, is the small section of siding where the clock goes was all cut too big for that area. We double checked the structure and everything else was correct so all the siding was the problem.

What should have been a 10 minute step turned into 2 hours because we had to sand down both sides of each piece until it fit. Maybe we just got a unit that had lots of problems but putting this thing together was awful.

Would not recommend.

I bought this for my daughter and family to enjoy during the summer. First, they showed up in 5 individual shipments and in order to find the directions I had to open all 5 boxes. In each box there was loads of wood but no “ease of assembly” like described.

On the edges of the wood it had a very faded ink stamp of a number and half were cut off so it was easy to organize. Many of the drill holes were not in the correct places and many pieces of the wood were cracked and chipped in the corners.

I’m so disappointed and dissatisfied after the hours me and family spent creating this for the kids. It’s also definitely smaller then pictured, I think it is fit more for toddlers.

There are several issues with this product! I will go down the list because for 800 and something dollars this should be better quality than what is offered. The first thing I would gripe about is the first thing you have to do which would be to lay everything out! I started by laying the wood out by what was supposed to be marked with a letter/number.

When I tell you I had to guess on some because you couldn’t read the stamp that was either smudged, or half on board. The next thing I done was had seen all the screws,nuts, and bolts. For this price either they should have been attached with tape to the piece of wood possible in bundles, or even put in the tray packaging with the punch out label on the back.

Was over 30 bags of items and made a dang mess once opened in trying to stay organized. The third thing is the quality of this wood. Did I expect top notch wood, I did not but for this price this was awful.

I could literally bend the wood piece myself while holding each end. I thought to myself by this point to send back but thought we’ll just wait and see you bought it, you have tore open the boxes, not let’s just try.

I had my father come help me that owned business in construction for over 20 years. When I say this he was so mad at quality as every time you put a screw/bolt in this piece of wood it would split. I mean even the pre drilled holes provided you would put bolt the through and tighten slowly to prevent splitting.

Almost everyone it would end up split. Again I’m not expecting grade a lumber but this is absolutely unacceptable for this price. The whole package has been a nightmare and feel bad as this was bought for great summer activity and yet it is this pile of crap.

I am requesting a box that is big enough to store this crap in and will gladly send this back. I do not want a replacement as the quality is not worth anymore of my time, and I will have to invest in different activity for my kids.

I will tell people to save their money because I am so upset that I saved for this, and this is what I got!.

We bought this for our 2 year old grandson. While he’s a bit on the young side for it, he immediately loved climbing (with some assistance) up the ladder to the fort. He was hesitant to try the slide as it was higher and longer than he was used to, but once he did, we couldn’t keep him off! This set will grow with him for several years.

We had a professional assemble it for us and are glad we did. It took him a full day plus and he had all the tools we didn’t. Some of the wood seems soft and a few boards split. I was very pleased that customer service promptly sent replacements.

One thing I would recommend is that the wood gets painted or stained before construction. We realized it would need some type of weather protection and stained it after it was built. Not the easiest of projects but we managed.

I would definitely suggest doing that before building – just don’t cover the letter and number on each piece or that will be another headache!.

Lots of other reviewers have correctly addressed this play set’s quality. It’s real wood (light wood, but real) and the hardware isn’t so cheap that I’m left concerned it’s going to corrode after two seasons and fall down.

My main beef with the thing was the packaging and setup instructions. My wife, father-in-law, and I got it done in about 10 hours total, but that could EASILY have been 6 or 7 hours if we didn’t have to spend so much time sorting through hardware.

The wood is labeled well enough. There are a lot of pieces, so at first you’ll spend a little time searching for the right one, but as the pile thins, that becomes easier. But the hardware? I thought it was a joke! The hardware (of which there is a ton) comes in three boxes.

There are easily several hundred pieces, including all the bolts, nuts, screws, washers, lock washers, t-nuts, and screws – and apart from a few things that were pre-bagged, it was all just LOOSE HARDWARE.

Then, adding insult to injury, the labels for the hardware in the instructions don’t match the printing on the hardware itself. You’re forced to actually measure the bolts to make sure you’re getting the right size.

And it’s not like there were 10 four-inch bolts and 20 eight-inch bolts. There’s at least 8 sizes, many of which differ from each other by only a quarter or half of an inch. Toward the end of the build, we were left with two bolts of slightly different sizes, one of which was too small for its intended application, resulting in a hardware store run.

End of the world? No, but so completely preventable. At that point in the process, there was no way of knowing if we’d not received the right number of bolts or if we’d used one incorrectly six hours before.

Asking the buyer to sort through all the carriage and hex bolts on their own to inventory what they received against the packing list is burdensome and silly. With a few extra labels and plastic bags, Gorilla could make this a lot easier.

But no, they just dump all the metal parts in a couple of boxes and say good luck. All in all a good set, but either count all 500 pieces before you begin or have a hardware store in mind to hit up when you find out you’re missing one critical part.

We have had our Gorilla play set for almost 10 years. It has been through one move and has has been restrained once. It still looks great and is holding up quite well. I have had to replace the awning cover twice over the years.

A tree fell on one and ripped it and the second one just wore out. Our two younger kids still use it when the weather allows and now our oldest brings his daughter over and she also plays on it. I have friends with small kids and have seen the play sets they have.

I feel as though, Gorilla has a better product. The lumber used is beefier than most others on the market. Their are play sets that are even stronger than Gorilla, but their is quite a price difference.

Money aside, Gorilla has a great product that, with a little care, will last for quite a few years. Thank you for what you do and keep up the good work!!.

Purchased through Gorilla, was shipped in a timely manner. However delivery was not satisfactory, was delivered in a semi-truck and required several people to move all the boxes inside the truck due to heavy items already in the truck from another delivery.

The product itself is overall lacking in my opinion given it’s price point. The wood is easily cracked, multiple boards w/ mild cracking now after use. Concerned about the long term durability. the tube slide option is fun for the kids, however the slide is very thin and installation was difficult given the plastic was warped and not well constructed.

My kids do love this set, however, quality is fairly low in my opinion, had a previous set from tree frogs and they had a much better product.

Took us about 20 hours to build with two adults. So, we had it up pretty easily over an evening and weekend. The first four hours may have just been laying out all of the pieces. The digital directions were super easy to follow.

A second battery powered drill definitely helped. I have a 2 and 4 year old. The little one makes me nervous how quickly she climbs and launches herself down the slide, but they both love the playground.

It’s been over 6 months being built, and they want to play on it almost everyday after school. I think the little café is their favorite part; we bought some cheap plastic foods off Amazon for outside.

Out of thousands of pieces, it was missing two little bolts. Their customer support was nice and had us replacement parts in about three days.

The Shenandoah playground is a nice structure with a 10 foot slide (in my opinion, I wouldn’t get an 8 foot slide. my grandsons 5 and 2 use the 10 foot with no problem. ) The only feature I don’t like with the Shenandoah is the seating area.

It does not appear to be sturdy, and I think there should be a center support. I paid to have the structure put together, and unfortunately, they have to return to level it better and to fix a few issues with the installation.

Rebar anchors were ordered since it is presently not anchored down. Overall, I am happy with Backyard Discovery. I also purchased the Woodland a few years back which I like a little better. There are 3 seats on this structure as opposed to the bench seat on the Shenandoah.

Just beware the installation. We put the Woodland together – 2 men took about 10 hours, and it was well anchored, level, and I eventually stained it. Now I hope that when the installers return, they can fix the Shenandoah for us.

I recommend Backyard Discovery and their products overall.

The swing set was easy to assemble and the pieces were well labelled. Some of the pieces were warped, and a few had cracks. We followed the assembly instructions to a T, and yet some of our boards still cracked during assembly.

I will be contacting backyard discovery for replacement boards. It is quite sturdy although it does shift when two of the kids are on two of the swings and swinging simultaneously. My daughter absolutely loves it.

My father and mother purchased this for my daughters, 2 and 4, in March 2020 as a surprise birthday gift. COVID-19 happened, and there was a delay getting the playset which was fine – there were WAY bigger things going on in the world so we told the girls it was coming.

In May, my father had a sudden hemorrhage, and after fighting for months, he passed in August from a nosocomial infection. Because of the pandemic, my girls were not able to see him except via Zoom for the last 3-4 months of his life.

In November, the playset finally came. I cannot explain the happiness on my kids faces, this “last surprise” from their grandfather. After the year we have had, that many of us have had, this playset finally put a smile back on their faces.

I can tell my father put A LOT of time into researching to find the best because the quality is AMAZING. It’s very sturdy, safe, and has features that are “rough enough” for my 4 year old but “easy enough” for my 2 year old.

We also purchased some of the extras – the seesaw swing, the bucket seat, and we have set up a picnic area in the covered area. This playset is great and I’m so thankful for this final gift from my father to the kids, something I know they will create fond memories on that will last a lifetime.

Right out of the box there were at least 10 pieces of wood that were broken or splitting and needed to be replaced. Luckily I had gorilla install the set and the guys who handled it were phenomenal and responsive and got replacement pieces and fixed it no problem.

I did have to call them Back 2-3 more times to come replace more broken or split pieces as I saw them though. However I am super worried Bc the wood just seems so lightweight and cheap I can see more breaking after the warranty is over.

The height of the deck is nice and the racing slides are fast. The tube slide is not really big enough for a big kid you can’t sit up in it and you kind of just twist your body around the inside laying down unless it’s a small kid like 2-3 yrs old.

Let’s be honest. I bought this play set because I was hoping for an activity that didn’t include me. I was picturing a nice morning. looking like a hot mess. with a coffee in my hand while my twin 3 year olds discovered new ways to torture each other.

Has it been everything I dreamed of? Of course not! Who knew you had to teach kids how to swing?! (Why don’t i remember being taught how to do this?!) But the basics of what I was hoping this would be are solidly there! We’ve gone all summer without any major or minor owwies! (MAJOR win when your son manages to trip over his own shadow!) And once the “human eating” spider webs are removed.

I am able to finagle half a cup of slightly warm coffee. And while they for some reason need mommy involved in the endeavor. it is still hours and hours of safe, strength building, pirate chasing, “no boys/no girls” fortifying, capture the flag playing fun! It was also a major hit with the other kiddos at the twins 4th birthday.

It’s kind of hard to fight about whose turn it is on the slide when there are 3! So while this wasn’t everything I dreamed of because let’s be realistic. mommy time doesn’t exist until they’re teenagers and you no longer exist.

the play set itself is awesome and I see years of use in its future!.

Just finished putting this together and it is a wonderful swingset. Our daughter has wanted to play on it every day so far. It is a decent time investment to put together and seal yourself (a week of solid work around a full time job).

Helpful to have a couple people to help hold things. A couple of notes/modifications for anyone interested – (1) our swingset did not ship anywhere near the initial time listed on the product page. Once you buy it they note that it can take anywhere from 4-6 weeks to ship and ours took closer to the 4 weeks mark vs.

the 7-10 days. (2) Ours came with three green flags and one yellow flag instead of the two green and two yellow flags shown. Not a big deal to us but others may care. (3) We couldn’t really tell from the instructions where the third set of handles were supposed to go.

So we put them on the outside of the opening near the rock wall. Now having looked at the photos online closer there are two sets on the skyloft (just in case anyone else has trouble picking that out).

(4) Our daughter is younger and not quite ready for the skyloft yet – so we moved the tic-tac-toe board down to the main loft across from the slide. The railing “spindles” are not the same length between the skyloft and the main loft so we took extra roof boards (from the sky loft add) and cut them to size.

(5) Again since our daughter is younger we removed a couple of boards on the rock climbing wall and spaced out the rest so it could also be used like a ladder (for very small feet). This makes it easier for our daughter (who doesn’t quite grasp the concept of rock-climbing yet) to use.

I ordered a play set several months ago when It was delivered the delivery service dropped it at the curbside which is not only downhill but is almost 300 fee away from my house so I actually had to carry all the boxes up the hill into my house which took several hours and a lot of effort.

This was just the first part of a very frustrating process. Afterwards I had to set up a date to get the installation of the play-set in my backyard for which I had to wait a couple weeks. The installation itself went somewhat smoothly and the tech that tried to put it together was a very nice gentleman.

Unfortunately several pieces were missing from the play-set. The playset stands incomplete in my backyard. I heard from the tech at optimum installs that he is going to reach out to the company to get the missing pieces and that he will return to install those.

But so far the whole experience have been far from smooth and I don’t think I would recommend any of my friends to buy a gorilla place-set. The material itself is great and I can definitely see it’s very high-quality and at least the pieces that were put together look very nice and have provided some fun to my family but the process itself has been very frustrating and it goes without saying that as of now my swingset is still incomplete and I have not heard about when it will be completed and when will the technician will be returning with the missing pieces to put it all together.

After a couple weeks of research, we settled on the Pioneer Peak playset with the standard roof as a birthday present for our twins who just turned 4. The product shipped and was delivered extremely quick – we ordered on 9/17 and it was delivered on 9/24.

All of the wood pieces were clearly labeled, which made it easy for my dad and I to organize everything before construction. We ended up needing to make a trip to the hardware store for a few pieces of hardware (missing 4 t-nuts and 4 bolts, which to be honest might have been included and we just misplaced them), but we had planned on needing to make at least one trip based on experience with prior playset builds.

Construction was pretty straight-forward. The assembly guide did a good job with diagrams and instructions. My dad and I are both handy and even taking our time it only took us about 20 hours to unpack, organize, and build.

I’m very pleased with the sturdiness and overall quality of the product so far. I still need to apply a sealant, but so far we haven’t experienced any wood chipping/cracking/splitting. And for what matters most – our kids (and all their friends in the neighborhood) love it! Watching their imaginations go to work playing different games, swinging for hours on end, having fun with their friends – my wife and I are very happy with the purchase.

I’ll start by saying my grandchildren love their new swing set – so mission accomplished. That said, the 5 hour installation time woefully underestimates the challenges of DIY installation. Of note, my husband builds furniture, so he knows his way around tools and woodworking.

The 69 pages of directions were certainly detailed. Unfortunately the same detail was not noted in the alignment or depth of pre drilled holes. We also needed to request a missing bolt which delayed assembly.

Bottom line – it may be wiser to pay for someone to complete the installation.

Backyard Discovery is very enjoyable to work with. Their play set is good quality and the color is accurate. We have a 5 and 3 year old and both can plan on this playset independently. Our 5 year old will outgrow the swing soon or he’ll just have to not swing his highest.

But right now it’s great and the height of the stairs is what we wanted for safe independent play in the backyard. I would definitely use them again and highly recommend them as a reliable quality company.

GoConfigure also was great for assembly. Trustworthy and did a good job.

We put together the play set over Labor Day weekend with the help of three adults. Overall it took about 7 hours of actual work. The play set was delivered with no damages parts and was very well labeled.

Even the hardware was well labeled! The instructions were hands down the best set of instructions I’ve ever used. The play set itself is wonderful. We have a 14 yo, 2. 5 yo, and newborn. It was very important that all of them could play together on this set.

In particular we were concerned with getting a swing set that could handle an adult height/weight so our 14 year old ++ could join the little kids on the swings. At 130lbs and 5’ 4” she easily swings on the set no issue or strain on the swing bar.

Height wise getting into the club area is a challenge for her but swinging was our main concern. The set is solid and with maintenance via the staining I have no double it will last for all three kids.

The product itself is a high quality play set and my daughter loves it. The different sections keep her entertained. She loves the kitchen and we added a telescope to it. That being said, the product came with missing screws and damaged pieces.

Asked for a replacement piece (weeks later we still haven’t received it). Ended up going to hardware store to replace screws and sanded down the wood that arrived scratched up and/or splintered. Recommendation to Kidcraft: have a quality control team go through the items before shipment and have some layer in between the wood and the box so that layer can take the damage in shipping rather than the wood.

Given the length of time to receive the replacement piece, if it ever arrives, when it comes time to replace this set, I probably won’t buy a kid craft play set again.

I only gave this 4 stars simply because we were missing a part and one of the pieces was broken which was a inconvenience. I called kidcraft and they replaced the broken piece and sent the piece I was missing super fast.

Overall it was fairly easy putting it together. My mother in law did 90% by herself in a weekend. You will definitely need two people for the tube slide but it wasnt difficult just time consuming. My daughter absolutely loves it and I would definitely recommend.