Replace Playground Canopy with a Wood Roof

When a family with six kids lives someplace long enough, stuff eventually wears out.

That would be true for the canopy on our Rainbow Play System.  The playground has seen a lot of action and the red, yellow and blue canopy was ripped and shredding.

Some of the corner flags had broken off due to the fact they were used for many a game of capture the flag.

Trying to find a replacement canopy for our model number was harder than I thought.  Do you think I could find one?  Of course not.  I did find the knock off's that say they will fit, but considering I never really liked the original colors all that much I didn't want to pay $75 dollars for one that looked like a tarp.

I inquired of the man with the saw if he thought it would be easy to update it with a wood roof.  Nothing fancy and I didn't want it to take till Fall to complete.  No problem he said.

Instead of a solid color I wanted to do the boards like the porch bench he recently made, each one different.

We started out with 3/4" boards of various widths - 3 widths to be exact.  Brawn cut them to size and made the bottoms sort of rounded like an awning.

Next we lined up all the paint cans from the garage and a bin of dollar store paint brushes and I picked whatever can was closest and started painting boards.

I ended up using a brown, a dark gray, green, cream and that awful purple/pink color that went on the dresser bar.  Once it's wiped with dark stain it looks a deep wine color and I can live with that.

Bright Purple/Pink color after it is washed with dark stain

After the boards were done they were all bright and newly painted looking.  And I didn't like that look.  See how that purple/pink color looks before the dark stain wash - YUCK!  I used my favorite dark Olympic Stain for the wash to age them and tone each color down.

Some rain came through and changed my plans to put several coats of marine varnish on before installation, so this week I'll be finishing that up. 

First the nail gun was used to tack the wood on, then the crossmembers were added on the underside and it was all screwed together.

I love how it turned out.  For half the price of a canopy top we have a roof that the wind won't be able to blow off.

The only thing left was some new flags.

Last summer I picked up a bunch of leather sample pieces at a garage sale for a dime each.  I painted some dowels I found hiding in the garage, cut the flags, stapled them on the dowel, and screwed one on each corner.  I love how those turned out too.

I wonder how many folks have leather playground flags made from furniture fabric samples?  They won't last forever and eventually I will have to make some bigger better ones, but for this summer I'm calling it complete.

After with new wood roof

The to-do list is slowly but surely being picked away at.  I think it only has 50 chores left on it.  I noticed we never put the third swing back up after the baby swing was taken off last summer.  So make that 51 chores.

Linking the Playground Roof Replacement up at:
Freaking Awesome Friday @MellywoodsMansion
It's Party Time @ThreeMangoSeeds
Homework Wednesday @TheEverydayHome
All Things Summer @TwoTwentyOne
Craft-o-Maniac Monday@CraftOManiac 
The Scoop @TheFarmhousePorch