DIY Sandbox and Chalkboard Wall For Under $200

My family was in town this month for my cousins wedding and every time my dad comes he ALWAYS helps us with projects we have been wanting to finish around the house. He is quite the handy man and can build just about anything with his hands. So, while he was here I asked if he’d help us build the girls a custom sandbox in the backyard and he jumped right on it! Here is how we brought to life this DIY Sandbox and the Chalkboard Wall for under $200 in one day!

The Sandbox:

We headed to Home Depot and bought the following supplies for the Sandbox:

4 – 4in x 6in x 8ft pine boards

(couldn’t find the exact link to Home Depot so this is the same kind we got but from Lowes, same price) 

8 – Lag Screws  (at least 6 inches long)

15 – Bags of Play Sand

1 – Roll of Weed Blocker

Home Depot (or Lowes) will actually cut your boards for you to the size you want which is awesome for people that don’t own a saw. So we had them cut the boards at 5ft long so we could make a 5X5 size sandbox. You can go as big as you want, but I didn’t want it taking up too much space since our backyard is pretty small. Here’s my amazing dad putting it all together:

We left about 4 inches free from the back wall and then put the weed blocker down. My dad made sure to level the ground a bit and we filled the box with 15 bags of sand! (It actually was a little much so poor it in slowly and see if you want a little less). Although we didn’t do this because Arizona’s ground is hard, it is an option to dig down into the ground a bit, but we found these boards to be high enough.

Love DIY’s? Also Check out My:

DIY Collage Wall

DIY Calendar Wall

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The Chalkboard Wall:

We found our boards at Michaels and purchased:

4 – 23 x 35 Chalk Boards with Wooden Frames

You may have seen this idea on Pinterest which is exactly where I saw it. BUT, let me tell you…EVERY TIME I would click one of those links that said DIY Chalkboard Wall it would never lead me back to an article that actually taught you how. And the one article that did said they painted a large board with chalkboard paint and it actually ended up peeling from the sun a year later.

Since we live in AZ where it gets HOT HOT HOT! I decided to find the largest chalkboards I could and just purchase them. We found ours at Michaels and I bought four of them to fill up the whole space behind the sandbox. Michaels always has coupons at like 40%-50% off one regular price item but you can only use it once a day. So I literally dragged three of my family members with me, gave them the money and we each bought a chalkboard at half off! LOL 😀 (we cheated, I know). Since the boards are originally $22 each we ended up spending $44 for all four boards instead of $88!

BUT! While searching Michael’s Online to tag the boards for you, they don’t list the exact boards we got on the site. So you can either go to your nearest Michael’s and check for them, OR the next option I found was on Amazon. They have almost the exact boards HERE  for $19.39.

Total Cost To Make:

Adding everything up, it looked a little something like this –

4 – 4-in x 6-in x 10-ft pine boards – $50.68

8 – Lag Screws – $15.84

15 – Bags of Play Sand – $76.50

1 – Roll of Weed Blocker – $9.99

4 – 23 x 35 Chalk Boards – $44.00

Dad’s Loving Labor = Free and Priceless 😉

Grand Total = $197.02

Side Note: The umbrella we already had since we used to spend our weekends at the beach, but I found some similar ones HERE and HERE. 

What do you think?! I’m so happy with how it turned out and can’t thank my dad enough! This is the perfect DIY sandbox and chalkboard wall idea for kids, especially if you have a small back yard like ours!

The girl’s absolutely LOVE it and are playing it in all day since it’s been done. They call it “the beach” since they associate it with their time spent at the beach when we lived in California 🙂 

We have had a few extra bath days, lol, but that’s fine with me. THANK YOU dad for putting this together for your grand-babies!  We love you to the moon and back! :-*

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XOXO