Outdoor Changing Room

My kids love to play in the pool. They would literally spend all day out there if you would let them.

 As summer seems to be already here I have no problems with them spending lots of time out in the pool. It sure does make bedtime a lot easier. To help cut down on laundry I put up a little clothes line so that they could hang their bathing suits and towels out to dry.

It's only about 4 ft high so they all can reach it to hang their stuff out. The only problem I had then was that they would come in dripping wet after walking through the grass and dirt and that left wet, muddy tracks though the house and on some days they come in just to eat and turn around to go right back out. And sometimes they were too lazy to take their stuff back out to the line. I can't really blame them swimming is hard work, but that left wet suits and towels all over the bathroom floor.

So with the help of my awesome brother we set to work with a solution to my problem.

King of the hardware store

Here is Matt, my brother. He found that thing that he has on his head and crowned himself king. He is just so fun to be around. You can also see that he is carrying an armload of PVC pipe. He insisted on carrying it all. He is sweet like that too.

So this is what we came up with.

It is an outdoor changing room. I didn't take pics of us putting it together (I really need to get better at that). It is made out of PVC pipe and it is 5ft wide x 4ft deep and about 5ft tall. We bought 4 10ft 3/4 inch pipes and cut them down to 6ft. So we had 4 4ft pipes and 4 6ft pipes. The 6ft pipes were hammered into the ground about a foot. They were our 4 corners. The 4ft pipes were our sides and we also got a 5ft pipe that went across the front. 

After figuring out the dimensions I was trying to decide what to use as curtains. My original thought was to use shower curtains but after we found out that we would need three of them and the cheapest that I could find, that were not see through, were $12 a piece I thought I could come up with something better. After looking around we came across some flat sheets and we figured out that if we turned them sideways we would only need two of them and at $5 each it was really a no brainer.

I did have some hemming to do though. Leaving it like it was would make them about 6 inches too long. So I did a double hem of 1 1/2 inches at the top and a 3 1/2 inch hem at the bottom.

Here you can see where I hemmed it at top and added buttonholes so that we could use shower curtain rings to hang it up. It was the first time that I used my buttonhole maker on my sewing machine and after a little practice they were a piece of cake to make.

After cutting all the PVC pipe for the structure we had 2 4ft sections left over so I put them in the bottom hem to help weight it down. They matched up perfect with the 4ft sides. Then in the bottom corners of the front sections I put a 1in flat glass pebble to help keep the curtains closed.

Here is a glimpse of the inside. As you can see I am slowly adding paving stones to help cut down on the grass that sticks to their feet. I have a few more to get.

It turned out a lot better then I thought it would. Now when they get out of the pool they go into their changing room take off their bathing suits, dry off, put on their coverups and then hang their stuff on the line and come on in. No dripping wet stuff to deal with and no wet, muddy tracks all through the house. Then when they are ready to go back out they just put their coverups back on (that is if they have changed out of them) head out, pull their bathing suits off the line change into them and hop back into the pool. Easy peasy. It has really worked out great so far.

So what have you made or want to make/get to make your outdoor summer fun easier?

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