This week, we worked on a 3-day playset refresh in our backyard and we’re all so excited with how it turned out. Our girls are always playing on this playset that was left here (and possibly built by) the previous owners. We gave the playset in our last house a refresh to match our home and we thought this would be a fun opportunity to try out a potential paint color, too!

Here’s the playset before:

And now!

In addition to paint (we went for Benjamin Moore Graphite–the front contender for our exterior color!), we also reworked a few existing pieces.

The A-frame front came up short, exposing the bottom, but covering a cute balcony area up top. So, we took it off, flipped it and made a straight cut and reattached it leading up to the balcony–to make a cute rock climbing wall.

Half of the base was a sandbox and the other half was…a rotten piece of wood (I’m sure it was cute in its day!) so we decided to just make it one big sandbox since that’s Polly’s favorite place to play. We surrounded the base with fresh, pressure treated wood to really define it.

When we painted our last playset, we used a roller and brush and it took a solid week to paint all of the nooks and crannies. This time we used a paint sprayer (this one!) for the primer (an exterior wood primer is essential!) and paint and we primed one day and painted two coats the next, with the active painting time only about an hour.

Besides paint, a gymnast bar (to replace the baby swing) and fresh sand, limestone climbing holds were the only other thing we purchased for this project. The stone we’re incorporating on our exterior is also limestone so I thought it would be another way to tie the two together. Plus, they really beat the look of the plastic ones and our girls feel so cool climbing!

A few months ago, I had ordered a few small samples of Annie Selke rugs to test out on our stairs–still deciding on that oops. They are indoor/outdoor and I decided to lay a couple in the playset for extra comfort and cushion, along with a couple older outdoor pillows–which kind of makes this officially a clubhouse too, I think.

I was worried that our youngest, Polly (3 on Saturday!), would struggle with the rock climbing wall, but she zoomed right up and made herself at home on the balcony.

The summers are shorter in Idaho, but I feel like we just bought ourselves another two months of outdoor play with this refresh.

Have you painted your playset? We’d love to see! Drop a link in the comments and we’ll share a few favorites on Instagram! You can see our last DIY painted swing set here!

SOURCES

PAINT COLOR: Benjamin Moore Graphite
Gymnastic Bar
Limestone Rock Climbing Holds