Thread: a pre xmas win - kids playground

been looking around for a playset for the kids in the back yard. was tossing up between something from funky monkey but shopping around I found this:

Everest.jpeg

its sold from bunnings and every so often see them for sale 2nd hand. Being $2300 new I didn't really want to pay much more then $1000. Found one semi close by, the guy mentioned it did have some rust underneath it but he eventually sold it to someone else. a week or so goes by and I found another one, manage to haggle the lady down to $900 because she wasn't sure if she had all the parts to setup the swing (small yard). Thought if worse comes to worse I'll just make the brackets or knock something up out of wood. Turns out yes it was missing some bits but nothing I probably couldn't have made my self out of some steel plate.

go to pick it up spot a bit of rust on a few bits but don't think much of it as I was rushing around to get it on the trailer and go.

20221211_142250_40.jpg


got the big girl home and started to pull it apart to get it in the back yard and thats when the rust became apparent. tons of surface rust on bits, bubbling paint etc etc, its a shame on me for not giving it a once over when picking it up. I started trying to clean it up and investigating a few rust converters etc but It was becoming evident it was going to be a biggish task, not insurmountable but time consuming.

received_537585871623426_40.jpeg


there are a couple of vertical posts really chewed out so I had an idea of going to talk to bunnings to see if they could sell spare parts from it. Got to bunnings and the lady tells me its now a discontinued item but she gave me the email address of the supplier to talk to about spares. Well that supplier is no longer the supplier and was given another email address. Talking to them on the phone out of the 3000 or so units they've sold they had about 15 or so reported cases of this happening, but basically at some point during production they had to swap from just powder coated steel to galvanised powdercoated steel as there are a few design flaws with it. The first guy mentioning rust now makes sense.

but the supplier informs me they're going to send me a out whole new metal kit for free and hopefully get here between xmas and new years. So every bit of rusted metal and bolt on the play ground replaced for free getting it back to pretty much brand new condition and will include the few brackets etc I was missing. No one ever asked for a receipt or anything (just a few photos of the rusted bits). Absolutely stoked.

as the old sayings goes, if you don't ask you don't get.