Nerd and Healthnut: DIY Wooden Play Gym

You probably saw this play gym in the video of Sawyer. As I mentioned, Aaron and I made this play gym from scratch. I tried to find a tutorial online, but I couldn't find anything that we both really liked. The reason we made a wood play gym is that we want the baby toys we have in our house to aesthetically pleasing blend in with the rest of the decor. I.e. we don't really like the neon-colored plastic gyms that stick out like a sore thumb.

At the end of this post I will give some pictures and links to other DIY play gyms that are a lot more simply than this one, yet work just as well!

Overall, the entire play gym cost less than $30, which isn't bad considering wood play gyms are pretty expensive ($50-$200).

Materials

2' x 4' piece of wood (we bought ours at Lowes, like this)

3 24" in dowels

Screwdriver and screws

Jigsaw

Optional (but it will make your life much easier):

Power sander

Level

First, you need to cut the piece of wood in half, so you have two pieces of wood that are 2' x 2'.
Next, draw out a pattern on a large piece of cardstock or wrapping paper (that's what we did!). Afterwards we realized that my design was a little too elaborate. So, I would recommend just a plain triangle with no curves.

Trace the pattern onto each piece of wood. Then cut out the pieces with the jigsaw.
As you can see, we messed up a little on the pattern when we were cutting it out. Oh well, it was our first time working with wood :)

I would recommend clamping the pieces together and power-sanding the edges so they have a more uniform look. Sand the whole thing so it is super smooth. You don't want your baby getting scratched up!

With the pieces still clamped together, mark where you want the dowels to be attached to the wood. We did not keep them clamped together and this made our life much harder. So, keep them clamped together, mark, then drill holes through both so that they are identical.

Next, drill holes in the dowels.

Before screwing in the dowels, hole them up to both sides of the play gym and use the level to make sure they will be even.
Then, screw them in.

Finally, sand everything down, wash it off, and give a good polish with some homemade beeswax polish.

You can add all kinds of fun things to hang from the play gym. I cut out triangles and sewed them together. I also added some tassles strung on some deerskin lace.
As I mentioned before, I'm including some links with other ideas for wooden play gyms.