There are some people who just love to build things, and Matthew Cosman is one of those people.

He also happens to be a major contender for the “Best Dad Ever” award after building a world class dinosaur play area for his kids.

He chronicled the whole thing over on Imgur, sharing step-by-step snaps and updates of the entire construction.

Instead of a simple jungle gym or classic swing set, Cosman wanted to do something different, something mind-blowing, something that his kids would really adore!

He did it all out of love for his little ones and a passion for building, saying that “I make fun things for me because no one will pay me to build these crazy things.”

Cosman does have some experience in aerospace engineering, so he knows what it takes to build something strong, stable, and secure, but this job was still a huge undertaking!

It required a lot of hard work, plenty of help from Cosman’s brother, and a whole ton of materials too, including structural steel, wood, foam, chicken wine, kevlar, fiberglass, paint, and around 24,000 pounds of concrete too.

To start off, Cosman put together the skeleton of his dinosaur, adding some foam and chicken wire to give the structure some shape.

The dino itself resembles an Apatosaurus, a huge herbivore that lived during the late Jurassic period.

It measures up at close to 50 feet in length and about 10-12 feet in height, and according to Cosman, the dinosaur weighs in at around 3,500 lbs.

He also revealed that this was a project many years in the making, and he’d been spending a long time saving up any old materials from other projects, as well as getting cheap or free bits of metal and wood whenever he could from sources like classifieds and eBay.

Cosman added that if you wanted to make your own dino and buy all the materials right now, you’d have to pay at least $10,000, if not a lot more.

Either way, it’s a phenomenal accomplishment, and once the homemade clay and ceramic fillers had been applied, the creature started to come to life.

It was so heavy that Cosman had to hire a crane just to move it from the shop to his home. Next, he had to pour in all the concrete and set the footing in place as a foundation for the massive dinosaur.

Cosman said he got the idea from a time in his teenage years when he’d visited a local dinosaur park and saw how much the kids loved to play there. “I knew back then that this was something I wanted to build for my kids. Mostly because I knew I would have loved it.”

Once the concrete was dry and the dino was set in place, Chris laid down some rubber chips all around it in order to provide a safe and comfortable play area for his little ones.

Next, he had to start adding on all the various play elements and accessories.

He added a ‘crow’s nest’ on the dino’s head, along with a long metal walkway, giving the kids an elevated platform to climb up to and admire the views all around.

This part, along with all the other add-ons, was finished and added to the dino on-site, rather than at Cosman’s shop.

Naturally, every play area needs a slide, so this was one of the next parts of the project.

Cosman added a beautiful paint finish to the slide to make it look great, as well as installing colorful lights to the inside to add a little bit of magic to the final design.

Cosman says that there will be a lot of people out there who look at the project and complain that it’s too big, too expensive, or simply too difficult for most people to pull off.

But instead of focusing on what you can’t do, Cosman encourages every DIY enthusiast to focus on a project that matches up with their budget and skills.

He says that every project should be taken one step at a time, and people shouldn’t be afraid to ask for help, like he did with the dino.

Eventually, the project was nearing completion.

Cosman added some climbing webbing, rope, and monkey bar handles all over the sides of the dino to give the kids a range of options for climbing to the top.

He also fitted the whole structure with LED lights so that the kids can enjoy the play area, even when the sun goes down.

This was one amazing project, and the final dinosaur is simply staggering!

Any kid would absolutely love to spend some time climbing and sliding all over that thing, and plenty of people online have joked that they’d love to trade places with Cosman’s kids and try it out for themselves.

Check out the video below to see the dino come to life, and be sure to take a look at Cosman’s Imgur thread to learn more.

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Source: mvcosman, Imgur