I would not recommend this product to anyone. Colors do not match picture. We have assembled other swingsets and we spent many full days assemblying. For everystep multiple pieces of the same piece are in diff boxes. They only want you to pay for assembly. Its as though they intentionally make it hard to put the product together.

What a great swingset! My wife and I worked together on this for a combined 40 hours. I'll list some of our "tips" that we used, or would use if we were to do this again in the future. #1) Sort out all of the wood pieces. This is vital to make sure you have all of the pieces, but equally important for ease of finding the pieces when it's time to put them together. We literally emptied out our garage and sorted the wood pieces by letter, placing them around our garage...it worked quite well. We noticed a piece was missing, and it was shipped to us within just a few days...great service! #2) We built the "base" in our garage, and then carried it out to it's final destination in our yard before anchoring it down. #3) 2 or more wood clamps REALLY helped us out. I would strongly recommend purchasing some if you don't have any. A big help... #4) We had a Dewalt cordless drill/driver with 2 batteries. We used both batteries on all 3 days that we worked on the project. We found ourselves using 3 different attachments for our drill. A) A phillips screw-driver attachment. B) A small drill bit to drill pilot holes (3/16" or so). C) A 3/8" drill bit to drill holes for the bolts. Having a second cordless drill with just the 3/8" drill bit would have been helpful for us, as we found ourselves switching that one out quite a bit. #5) We also had a CORDED drill/driver that we used only for screwing in the lag screws. This was very nice to have, as if we had used our cordless drill for these, I feel the batteries would have drained much faster. We used the cordless drill only to screw in the wood screws, to drill pilot holes, and to drill the 3/8" holes. #6) We used a simple ratchet with socket quite often to tighten the bolts. We felt it was nice to get a "feel" for how tight to get them, vs. using the corded drill which could overtighten the bolts and crack the wood. #7) We found a jig-saw helpful to us, but for a somewhat frustrating reason. We had to unfortunately cut a few pieces of wood that either didn't fit quite right, or were a bit too long, etc. We started with a sander to get pieces to fit, but ended up finding the jig-saw to be much quicker. #8) The screws, bolts, washers, etc. are very well labeled, which was awesome! We opened the little baggies very carefully so we could still read what was inside the bag. #9) We used a trailer pulled with our lawn mower to haul our tools and all of the screws, bolts, etc. In the morning when we were ready to work, we drove the garden tractor and trailer to the swingset and went to work. When we finished for the day, we drove the lawn tractor and trailer into the garage to protect our tools and keep the hardware out of the elements. This worked well... #10) My wife mostly got the hardware ready for me, got the pieces of wood ready, etc., and read the instructions. It worked pretty well...because you truly can only do one step at a time, so if two people were to try and work on this together, you would quickly run out of room... The time put into this project was worth every minute when we saw our 3 kids' eyes light up when they got to see it for the first time! We've researched a lot of swingsets and this one gave us the most bang for the buck. The kids have used it every day since we put it up! Enjoy! We sure are so far!

This is a great product. Not only did I order one but so did my parents. We watch my grandson who is 2 1/2, very active and over and above the charts for height and slightly above for weight. He loves this play unit but does need assistance with the monkey bars and sitting on the swing...something to grow into. I read the reviews and the best one says to sort the boards and use posts it notes to write the letter and number on so easier to read and secure with scotch tape; and organize the bolts, screws, nuts into bins...best advise. My husband, son-in-law and I inventoried the four boxes in 2 1/2 hours. My husband, son-in-law and brother (all of which very good carpenters) built our unit in 16 hours. When my parents unit arrived, me and my mother (71 years old) inventoried it in 4 hours. Due to work schedules when my parents unit came my brother and husband assisted them one day for 9 hours and over the next 4 days, my parents (dad 74 very good carpenter) finished it. Having that extra hand to hold or lift is very beneficial. Just a few of the boards had some bow in them and this did require some strength to get them positioned just right. The main pointer they learned from...in the beginning you are putting side pieces together, rock wall. ladder and slide before starting the middle section. The crow's nest is not done till later in the directions. So on the second unit, they jumped to the back of the book and did the crow's nest before starting the middle section. It was much easier than trying to build it up in the air squeezing through the small access (for a large adult) opening. The unit is as nice as the picture shows!

My kids love this play set! We read reviews on the play set and decided to pay someone to put it together. Money well spent! The two guys who came out have put together thousands of play sets and it took them just under 7 hours to complete. The fort is large. I am 5'7" tall and I can stand inside the play set with room above my head. The play set comes with anchors for every post, so it is very stable. The set is perfectly still when all three swings are in use. The swings were pretty squeaky at first, but after my husband sprayed a little WD-40 on the hinges, they are completely silent. If you don't plan to use the sand box, I would recommend getting the little kit to add the extended porch. We didn't order it at first, but I plan to. FYI - when the set arrives, the slide is in pieces in one of the boxes. I thought it would come as one piece (like the ones I have seen at Home Depot), but it has to be assembled. One problem that we encountered while the guys were assembling the play set - we received one extra piece that we didn't need and we were short two small pieces from the back of the set. The pieces that were missing don't have any structural value, but it would have been nice to have all of the correct pieces. I will contact the manufacturer to have them replaced. Overall, we are extremely pleased!

We are actually in the process still of putting this set together, but i wanted to come on here and write a review as soon as possible to hopefully save someone else the horror of a set. it was a bday gift for our 3 year old and her father has been working 2 days now trying to get it together, on his third day I get a photo of one of the main beams completely slit at a notch, without him even drilling into it. Several other pieces would split as soon as hardware was put into it. the hardware is nice and tough but the wood cant hold up to it. I am almost scared to let my daughter play on it when it is finished. This is 100% not worth the money we paid.

Do not purchase this item. I read the bad reviews but saw that there were over 300 5 star reviews so I figured it must just be people who like to complain and purchased this swing set. The quality of wood is absolutly junk!! I sent the manufacturers about 25 pictures of splits in the wood including the main 4X4 supports wich are just 3 smaller boards glued togther. Their response was it was due to over tightening and the set was not on level ground let us know 5 parts that are the worst and we will replace them and see what we can do about dicounting any additional parts. Discounting!!!!! more than five pieces came craked out of the box. The play set is dead on leavel all the way around. I bulid decks and fences arbors etc for a living this is not pressure treated wood it is dry and brittle and splits before you get the screws anywhere close to being tight enough. This swing set will not last 2 years do not waste your money!!!!

After reading many of the reviews and consolidating the suggestions, I purchased the playset and completed the assembly. It's a great set and no parts were missing like others have experienced. It did take about 25 hours with two people to complete the assembly. Here are the steps we used which really worked out well thanks to many that have gone before me: 1. Removed the lids off the 4 boxes and used them to store the small boards and used them for prepping for the assembly steps. 2. Took an inventory of every board and larger parts, I did not count the nuts and bolts. 3. The small boards I placed in the box lids based on their lettering, i.e., I put all the "K"s together, all the "O"s together, etc. 4. For the larger boards (i.e. those that are too long to fit into the box lid) I stood against the wall in my garage in letter groupings like I did with the smaller boards 5. Get about 25 small contains/bowls and dumped each bag of hardware (nuts and bolts) in the containers and then taped the bag to the container so you could read the item description of what was in that bag. 6. Laid out the wood onto saw horses and tables and coated all the wood with water protectant (this part took forever) 7. My wife gathered all the boards and hardware required for each step and placed them into a box labeled for that given step. Used zip lock bags to hold the hardware. She was always a few steps ahead of me. 8. As I got to each step, all the wood and hardware were together to assemble that step. 9. Allowed my older son to prep some of the next steps which was a BIG mistake! Does not pay attention to detail so I spent more time chasing the missing hardware! 10. For the wood rails that make up the walls that have to be spaced apart, it was easier to just cut a scarp pieces of wood the dimensions the directions called for and used that as a spacer. 11. If you want the window in the top section to face the front of the playset like the picture, make that change in Step 59 and 60. The directions have that window facing the back of the playset and the front would be solid. 12. Once the playset was assembled, I sprayed on a second coat of water protectant. 13. I also used 2 cordless drills plus a cordless screwdriver, one drill I attached a 1/2 socket to help with those parts requiring the hex bolts. Good Luck!

When I received the playset it looked like a huge task from the 4 boxes of parts. I was able to complete this by myself in about 25 hours. The directions were fairly clear and the wood markings were mostly readable. Assembly was simple and when I ran short of a bag of bolts and 1 floor board a simple call to customer service had all parts on there way to me with no questions ask. My 3 year old is having a ball.

The directions are very confusing, You have to look a few steps ahead to find out if a board is backwards or upside down(and believe me it matters) The Spanish version has close up pictures, but the English version does not. Now that it is together it looks great! My advice is to have it professionally installed!!!

Sky Fort II is a great play set. It looks good, is sturdy, and your kids/grandkids will love it. It is not hard to assemble, but takes preserverance. We used four fairly competent people to assemble it (all 4 adults have masters' degees and more) and the total number of person-hours was 60. Although technically there really aren't 1 million parts, you will think there are. The instruction manual is good, but at times confusing in just where and how you should complete a step. There are multiple bolt/nut/washer/screw sizes and you really need to make sure you use the right ones as per the directions. Recommend you gather all parts from each step together and figure out which bold goes with which bolt barrel before hooking them together. Bolts and nuts strip very easily so you don't want to minimize number of times you tighten/untighten them. Spray a lubricant into the bolt barrels to make it easier. Lots of holes to line up and we had to drill some to get them to do so. We also had to shave some of the boards to get them to fit together. If you have young kids, ship them to a foreign country during the project as they will want to help but will be a hindrance. Finally, if any of your workers are married to another worker, consult divorce attorney prior to starting this project. Bottom line, YOU CAN DO IT YOURSELF, but at times you will be frustrated.