Farmhouse Play Set Makeover

I am going to show you how I transformed our outside play set farmhouse styled!

Chances are if you have little ones you probably have some sort of outside swing set or play set. When we moved into our house we were so lucky to have ours left by the previous owners. We talked about getting one for years for our children, but never did. My kids were super excited when they realized it was theirs. However, it was beginning to show its age and long exposure to the sun. The playset still had good wood and strong bones, but the color on the wood was fading and it needed an upgrade.

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playset in the back yard

I wanted to give it a modern farmhouse update. Black and white colors with a pop of colors in subtle places.

farmhouse playset

To start this project, I pressure washed the whole playset. Instantly, you could tell a change in color from the dirt coming off. The slides had so much dirt and grime stuck to them that it made me think that I should this more often to them.

playset in the backyard

Next, I took off all of the green window frames. These were easy to take off. The screws are all the same size so I just unscrewed each one, threw them down on the grass and piled them up to paint. The green color on them had faded so much from the sun. These things were craving an upgrade.

I laid them on a piece of thick paper and sprayed them with a black matte Rust-Oleum spray paint. It took me about 4 cans of paint to cover all windows.

I also used the same black spray paint to coat the pieces of hardware on the play set. Taping off these areas made it a little easier to make sure the paint didn’t get onto other areas. This was probably one of my least favorite parts of this project. The taping off took forever with such little time to spray paint. However, it looks great in the end, so it was all worth it.

The most extensive part of the project, was painting the whole thing with the white paint. The paint I used is pictured below.

paint used for playset makeover

The wood soaked up so much paint! It took multiple layers of paint to coat the wood evenly. Some areas needed 2 layers, while others needed 3! Beware of crouching in small places for long periods of time, paint dripping down into your hair and onto your clothes and the roof will require a tall ladder to reach the highest areas.

This project took me about 3 weeks working on it all by myself. I worked on it on the weekends and late at night after work when the kids went to bed. I was determined to get it done. Some nights staying up until midnight to get parts of it finished with 2 coats of paint.

After the whole playset was painted and dried, I screwed on the window frames, touched up some areas with paint and looked at my finished project. So proud of myself for pushing this! So many late nights and achy muscles, but my kids of cherished this upgrade in the back yard. We decorate for the seasons and added lights inside and out to have some late night play.

I added some adorable solar powered sconces to put on the outside. These come on each night once the sun goes down and keeps the top part of the slide lit up. Anytime we plan on staying outside and using the whole playset, we plug in the other lights that I hung up on the top part of the roof and the roof of the first floor.

I also recently added a window box to the front window using some wood pieces found in our garage and added some boxwood twigs to it. Links to the items in the picture are found down below.

playset makeover
Added some sand and stones on the inside at the bottom for the kids to have a sturdy surface to play on.
window box with boxwood stems
farmhouse playset diy makeover

Boxwood wreath. Boxwood stems. Flag banner.