At dawn, the lot in the new Kingsport community in Annapolis was bare save for the holes.
By the end of the day Thursday, there stood a playground of two twisty slides, a swing set, a climbing wall, monkey bars and more, all in bright yellow, blue and green.
In between, about 200 volunteers descended on the 2-acre site.
Among them was Paul Raines, president of the Southern Division for Home Depot, who came from Atlanta to help shovel mulch.
"We do a lot of playgrounds," said Raines, who was in town specifically to volunteer. "I'm doing another one next week in Atlanta."
Home Depot has partnered with KaBOOM, a nonprofit organization that has organized volunteer construction of about 1,000 playgrounds across the country in its 10 years of existence.
In July, KaBOOM officials met with about a dozen local children, asking for ideas and drawings about the playground. Those ideas were incorporated in the final design, which also has benches and a community bulletin board.
Eventually, there will be playing fields for sports.
"We've been working pretty much nonstop," LeeAnn Plumer, director of the Annapolis Department of Recreation and Parks, said at 1:30 p.m., as she surveyed the scene of people fitting together equipment, planting flowers and more. By that time, the swings and slides were already up, and the climbing wall and community bulletin boards were nearly done.
Jennifer McGee, who lives in Kingsport and has three kids, ages 7, 9 and 13, was one of the area residents volunteering.
For the past two months, she's been working with Plumer, helping to line up volunteers and coordinate other logistics. On Thursday, she was gratified to see everything come together.
"It's going to be great," she said, taking a break from shoveling mulch.
Moving the enormous pile of mulch - more officially known as engineered wood fiber - seemed to be the most time-consuming task, one that Raines seemed happy to tackle.
"I tend to work on the mulch," he said. "It's the best exercise."
The task got much easier once members of the Naval Academy's basketball team showed up.
Volunteers, including about 150 people from Home Depot stores in the area, started work around 9 a.m. When they arrived, they were given name tags and assignments. Stephanie Nelson, the KaBOOM project manager, said the idea is to form teams of people who don't already know each other.
