Ready to complete your own DIY Painted Swing Set Project? We picked up this old swing set on craigslist.com for $175 and gave it a facelift using a little paint. Okay maybe a lot of paint. We knew that we wanted to have a playground in our own backyard for the kids and neighborhood kids to play on but didn’t want to spend thousands of dollars. The hardest part was convincing my husband that we needed to paint it white. He thought I was crazy but clearly I’m always right!

The white paint with the black accents gives it that farmhouse-inspired look. If you’re here looking to tackle your own swing set, here’s all the details and important steps on how to complete your very own DIY painted swing set makeover!

This post contains affiliate links which means I may make a small commission when you purchase using the links provided, at no added cost to you.

What Can I do With An Old Wooden Swing Set?

Your first question might be, where can I find one? Like I said, we found ours on craigslist.com but you can also search Facebook marketplace. You could even stroll around your neighborhood and see if anyone is willing to part with theirs. It’s likely that you are going to have neighbors with kids who have outgrown them. We found ours about 90 minutes away so my husband borrowed our friend’s trailer and was able to transport the whole thing in one trip with his truck and trailer.

Which Swing Set Do You Have?

Our model is the Backyard Discovery Skyfort II Swing Set. This one is huge and expensive, so my recommendation would be to find something smaller or used. Bonus of buying a used one – you don’t have to put it together piece by piece. Although that does sound fun to me because I love stuff like that, I can imagine it takes FOREVER. 

The options have come a long way and the swingsets even come in white now so if you’re not up for a DIY you have the option of something like this from KidKraft.

In our case, after it was painted, the entire thing was put together the next day. If you’re wanting to do a farmhouse-inspired swing set makeover, painting a brand new swing set feels a bit insane and would probably be difficult and take lots of coats of paint since it has a fresh coat of stain on it.

How do you refurbish a swing set?

This was our first time taking on a project like this and of course I had to get a photo of the fun part, power washing. Here are the steps you’ll need to follow to makeover the whole playset.

1. Remove the hardware, windows and any accessories. We actually didn’t take the rock wall climbing rocks off, but we should have. It would have made painting it a great deal easier.
2. Power wash it. I mean come on – what’s more fun than using a power washer, it’s just so satisfying. Check out that before and after! This was November in Delaware so it was pretty cold, there’s a good chance my neighbors were watching me thinking I was crazy.
3. Update the Accessories – We were lucky that the slide and the old swings were in pretty good shape but you could certainly order new accessories and/or new swings from backyarddiscovery.com or amazon.com. You could also swap out the current swings for baby swings if you have small children.
4. Repair Boards or Make Any Structural Changes – The wood was pretty deteriorated in some places so we repaired the boards that needed it. As you can see in the photo above – all the boards on the crow’s nest (the lookout tower) needed to be replaced. We also did this for safety reasons. There were also some boards on the climbing wall that needed to be replaced.
5. Stain or Paint the play set – in our case we painted the wood white and I painted the window frames and the roof black. I liked the look of the black and white color scheme. Most of the playsets I’ve seen come with green or yellow accents, and I think painting them black (or even pink if you want a girly vibe) will make it look much more modern. When you are choosing a paint color for your swingset, you may want to consider coordinating it with the exterior colors of your own home.
6. Reassemble the play set and you’re ready for hours of fun and many more years of use! I’ve been meaning to add some finishing touches like flower boxes or solar lights but haven’t gotten around to it.

Can you paint a swing set?

Yes you can! After you have removed the accessories and other various parts that you want to paint a different color, you are ready to paint. I first painted the windows and the plastic accessories black. You could easily use black spray paint on these but it was winter and I was working indoors so I just painted them with a brush using flat black paint.

We used the same flat black paint to paint the roof. In order to tackle the white part, we used a combination of a paint roller, brush and a sprayer. For the first coat I used a brush and a roller. The sprayer is a great way to get in the cracks but I honestly feel like the brush was even faster.

The color is Benjamin Moore Simply White. We had it mixed up at Home Depot using Behr Satin Outdoor paint. You know there are about 100 different paint colors when you are looking at choosing a white, so instead of swatching a bunch of different colors I just went with a color that I already knew and had used in my home last year for a project. It took almost 4 gallons of paint to complete this DIY swing set project.

What we used for the project:

• Pressure Washer – we borrower our neighbor’s but I’ve linked a Ryobi brand here, they also make an electric one
• Paint Sprayer
• Satin Exterior Paint – We used the color Simply White by Benjamin Moore. Make sure you pick up paint that is meant for outdoor use. The black paint we used was not (just a can of paint we already had) and I think it will need some more touch ups in the years to come.
• Extra Lumber – Measure any boards that need to be replaced and find some pressure treated wood of a similar size to do your repairs.

We filled the bottom of ours with sand and the kids play in it for hours. We also found a plastic kitchen for pretend play (on the side of the road) that we put under there too. During the holidays we like to decorate it with lights for a festive touch.

Crazy story – we had a tornado rip through our backyard last summer. It literally picked up the swing set, lifted it over some trees and dropped it on my car in the driveway. We were able to rebuild most of it, but the monkey bars were not able to be salvaged.

If you are looking for tree or lawn care in the area, be sure to check out Daniel’s Lawn and Tree. They can take care of tree removal in New Castle County, tree trimming, stump grinding, storm damage and more. They operate throughout Northern New Castle County.

I absolutely love the way my friend Tami decorated her playset, be sure to check hers out for inspiration. If you love DIY projects – check out my IKEA play kitchen hack or my most popular post to date, How to Stencil Your Fireplace Surround.