How hard is it to take an existing playset apart, move yourself and reassemble?

[kayte]

Sweet Deannanb from here has offered the fort section of her wooden swingset to us. It's basically an elevated platform with a roof, a ladder and a slide.

Has anyone disassembled an existing play set and moved it themselves? How hard is it?

Also it needs a coat of stain. Do I need to sand it first? Has anyone stained a set before?

If there are no swings, just a slide and it is enclosed all around the fort area how much ground covering around it do I need?

[o_mom]

We did this last year. It wasn't horrible. A few hours taking down. Then we repaired a few things and stained/sealed the base before putting it back up. The re-assembly was about a days worth (6-8h), including digging out to level the base and getting everything but the slide reattached (needed a part and quit at that point).

If the fort is completely enclosed, then you need 6' from the end of the slide and 6' from the bottom of the ladder. You could go slightly less on the enclosed sides.

As far as the process... if it is not too far and you have driving access to both yards, you may be able to just take the roof, ladder and slide off and load the assembled set into a low open trailer. That is the easiest option.

We couldn't do that, so we took it apart in sections. When you do this, number the places that come together and use a notebook to write down all the steps. So, if we took the ladder off, number the spot where the ladder attaches with a 1, and the ladder with a 1, then write something like Step A: Removed ladder (1) from deck. Later, if you take an end panel off and it has 6 attachement points, number them whatever the next numbers are - say 10-15 and write Step G: Remove left end panel, #10-15. Make sure you write the numbers on both pieces of the attachment point.

With each step, take the hardware and put it in a plastic ziploc and write the step and numbers on it. So for that end panel, put the 6 bolts/nuts in a baggie and label it Step G - 10-15. Replace any hardware that looks bad since it is easier to do when it is apart and they really aren't that expensive.

After we got it down to pieces that fit in a pickup truck, we stacked most of it in the yard except the base which we wanted to stain and seal on the bottom because once it is up you can't get to that. For the staining, we powerwashed the whole thing, sanded just the deck portions where they may be crawling or have bare feet and then used just a semi-transparent deck stain. The solid stains are more like paint and apt to peel where a semi-transparent seems to hold up better. ETA: the staining was done later. We powerwashed (a few hours) and then you have to wait like 3 days for it to dry completely, then brush on the stain. We didn't mask or do anything special other than try not to stain when the sun was directly on it. I think it was about three or four naptimes for me to finish the staining.

When we put it back up, we just reversed the steps and had the hardware for each step separated in the baggies. We used a sharpie to label the pieces and it came off with the powerwashing or was covered enough with the stain that it wasn't obvious after we were done.

LMK if you have any questions.