While we are all quarantined, I know house projects are on everyone’s to do list. We have knocked out so many projects and I’m at this point in our house where my projects all require an engineer and architect and contractor so I’m kind of at a standstill. So… outside projects are my priority at the moment!
Our house is white with black shutters and I wanted the swing set to match the house. This project was SO fun and easy. Our 4.5 year old helped me paint each step of the way and we still finished it in one Sunday!
What you need:
- 1 gallon of white barn paint (I didn’t prime at all. 1 coat covered it!)
- 2 paint brushes (one for me, one for Mac – any size will work. I think ours were 3″ and 2″)
- wood stain (if you want to stain the roof)
- a tiny bit of black acrylic craft paint I already had (for the stripes on the awning) with a sponge brush
- black outdoor plastic spray paint
- painter’s tape
- solar lights (if you want, I cannot recommend these enough! I LOVE the ambience they add)
We pressure washed the swing set the week before we painted so the cedar would have time to dry. The Saturday before we painted the whole swing set, I spray painted all of the accessories with black outdoor plastic spray paint and I also stained the roof a dark wood stain!
Santa brought a swing set our first Christmas in our house, almost three years ago. Our yard gets a ton of sun and I guess I should have sealed the wood or something because it looked awful! The cedar faded so quickly.
We started on a Sunday morning after breakfast and believe it or not, we were finished before the sun went down… with enough time that the solar lights had enough time to charge from the sun and actually light up by sundown!
My husband stayed inside with the baby so Mac and I could spend the day together working and it was so much fun! We put on music and painted all day together.
Side note, a woman my size should not be cramped up in a tiny swing set trying to paint. I’m still sore! We painted the entire ‘exterior’ of the swing set before lunch and once it was dry, we went back out to paint the ‘floor walls, and ceiling’ of the house part. If I wasn’t already covered in paint before that, trying to fit in that play house definitely did it. I probably still have barn paint in my hair but it was so worth it!
On the climbing wall portion, I was originally going to use painters tape but I just painted around the climbing stones. It’s not perfect but who cares!
While everything was drying, I ran into my craft box and grabbed black acrylic paint to paint the stripes. The awning was originally hunter green and it was SO faded it almost looked white to begin with so I just did one coat with the barn paint, it seemed to absorb fine. I went over it with black stripes that are so far from perfect. Once that was dry, I sprayed the awning with polyurethane to seal it.
I LOVE how it turned out. We added cheap solar porch lights that drilled in so easily and look perfect. Everything else was included with the swing set, just painted black. We’ve played on this so much more since it became pretty. I know our baby girl will love playing on this as she gets older too. We recently put her baby swing on it and she loves swinging!
We just finished arranging a little plastic flower box with UV resistant artificial flowers that we will hang soon!
Didn’t it turn out cute? The old cedar swing set blended in so much with our trees it didn’t really stand out. Now it stands out and I get a text almost every time someone new drives by and sees it in the backyard. It was SO worth a fun afternoon spent with my boy! If you’ve been considering redoing your weathered swing set, DO IT.
