Basketball hoop on the garage

Years ago our garage had a basketball hoop on the garage. It wasn't installed at the right height and, as it turns out, was just a piece of plywood with a metal hoop. When I resided the garage I took that hoop down. It took me most of last summer to get the garage into the shape I needed to finish the siding. I put up sheets of plywood to strengthen the sides, wrapped it in left over Tyvek and then began the siding towards the end of the fall. We couldn't decide on a stand alone basketball hoop or to put one on the garage. Last summer ended and no hoop.

My boys really wanted to shoot hoops so a garage hoop was chosen.

Now I have a lot of experience with many projects under my belt. When the guy at Dick's Sporting Goods said the install was pretty easy, I believed him. He was wrong. Putting the basket together was easy but installing it on the garage was a different story. I bought a 3 in 1 basketball bracket. That thing had so many parts. Three configurations meant there were holes stamped in all the metal parts. Wouldn't have been bad if the directions were better. Written in five different languages didn't really help--especially if all the written direction were as crappy as the English ones. The drawings were very hard to read making it even more difficult to tell which hole to put the different bolts. All of that said, it got done.

To install the backboard at exactly ten feet I was not too excited to carry the backboard up a ladder. Instead, I backed my minivan up to the hoop site and stood on top of that. Good thing I did that. The backboard slipped and I was just barely able to catch it before it fell completely off. I would have been flat on my back in the drive way. It took a little bit of work to get the bolts in place and I had to buy a large socket but it went together nicely.

This was definitely not an easy install- Mr. Dick's salesman.