We are so excited to have this new addition to our house! It took a ton of sweat equity and a whole lot of love to bring this baby back to life.
We were able to purchase this used Rainbow Playset for a heck of a deal. It was however painted brick red and much of the paint was wasting away. Oh how I wish I would have saved a “before” photo so you could see how much it’s changed.
It took us about 3 days straight of stripping paint, sanding and staining but it was well worth the effort. Now when I look at this playset I can admire all our hard work. Here is how we did it . . .
Step 1: Pressure Wash
Start by using a pressure wash to strip the paint off the boards. You want to make sure to get most of the paint off to make sanding easier. Set them to dry.
Step 2: Sand
Once the boards are dry you can sand them down with a hand held sander. We started by using just plain sand paper and quickly realized we would need something with more power. The boards we had were pretty beaten up because they sat under the sprinkler system that pounded on the playset non-stop. Word of advice, don’t let this happen to you. It diminishes the quality in the woodwork and the life of your playset won’t last as long. We made sure to sand down deep down so that the boards were really smooth.
Step 3: Finish
After sanding the boards we started to finish them using exterior deck stain we purchased from Sherwin Williams. Since we were working with cedar wood we selected a redwood stain color to match.
Once we applied a coat of stain to the entire playset we allowed it to dry overnight. The boards just drank it in and we ended up applying a second coat the next day. All in all we probably went through about 4 1/2 cans of stain.
tristarakow.com 