While we always have a larger renovation or project going on in the house, Dan likes to have his “fun projects” to work on on the side. This gives him a little getaway from the heavy-lifting work, and always brings out his creative side. This time around, the fun projects were making lawn games for the backyard – corn hole and washers.

Corn hole
I’m sure you’ve seen the fun corn hole sets that are painted the colors of your favorite sports team or engraved with their logos. This is a fun and easy game to customize, so why not try building it for yourself? While a Bills logo or Polish falcon would be fun, we decided to keep our first set of corn hole a little more basic, and a lot more rustic, by going with a dark stain.
The frame was built with 2x4s, and the “table” was a 4’x2’ piece of plywood.

I thought the 2×4 legs were the coolest part, since Dan installed them with bolts that would rotate, allowing the legs to fold in neatly for storage.

After assembling, the 6” hole was cut out 9” from the top, and 12” from each side using a jigsaw. Dan also added a neat little detail to the back of one of the corn hole boards – a scoreboard. He drilled 42 holes – two rows of 21 – and added a peg to each. Now there’s no more excuses for losing track of the score!
After testing a bit of stain, we decided to go with Zar’s Moorish Teak (just can’t resist the dark stain), and finished it off with semi-gloss – just enough slide without the bean bags completely flying off the back of the board. Don’t want to give anyone excuses for a missed toss =)

Washers
Another game that I first learned to play when I met Dan was washers. We used to play at the cottage at Crystal Beach during our first few summers together. Similar to corn hole, but a lot more difficult to play. In essence, you have to throw your washer into a box that also has a cup built into the middle of it. Two points in the cup, 1 point in the box. But just because you hit the box, doesn’t mean the washer is going to stay. Chances are, that sucker’s going to bounce out of the box faster than it fell in. Making it all the more challenging.
To make it, Dan used 1x4s for the outside of the box, with plywood as the base. To finish it off, he stuck with the rustic look by staining the outer box a Red Mahogany and painting the base black to add a bit of contrast.

While I know this oversimplifies it a bit, he then used 4″ plumber tube as the middle cup, gluing and screwing that down to the base of the plywood. The final touch was adding two four latches – two each on opposite sides of each other). This makes it easy to box up and take the set of washers with you when traveling.

Of course, both of these games already have a lot of wear and tear under their belt. Between camping trips to Allegany and Jam in the Valley, and two family parties, I’d have to say both have held up pretty good. And there’s plenty more action where that came from.