Restoring a Dream Castle

[Cindercat]

Hi guys,

I've finally started cleaning up my Dream Castle. I think it's in quite good condition considering its age. Hinges broken, but still swing.

The two major problems, which I'm hoping someone can help with are:

Yellow glue splodges on nearly every seam. Is there a way to remove this?

Secondly, the white floors are not really white. I've used oxyclean and toothpaste so far.
I've seen other threads on here about using hydrogen peroxide cream to whiten yellowed plastic. Has anyone tried it on a castle before?

I thought it was still lovely and pink, but I took off a piece of Sellotape which now shows the actual original colour. As far as I can see, there's no fix for that? Or the slightly brown blue turrets?

Lastly, can the winch for spikes basket be replaced? I've searched eBay, no joy. Any ideas?

I would love to see photos of other peoples castles? Any tips or advice would be great, thanks.

[Aflame]

i would love to do this to  but have no clue how !!! lurking round here till theres some tips !

[Cindercat]

I've been googling restorations all day : )

There's someone on here (kimono I think) who has made a restoration kit, all the stickers to print off, fab!!

I've found a thread where she is researching making the white plastic white again.....no more info!

Hopefully she (or someone else who knows) comes along : )

[BowtieG1]

To make the pink go pink again I would use a magic eraser first, and if that didn't work, lay down strips of sellotape, covering all the pink, leave for an hour and peel it off. Use the good quality stuff with no adhesive!

[hathorcat]

Thankfully pony playsets are made of a harder plastic than ponies and therefore are much more forgiving of bleaching agents as the chemicals are less able to get into the plastic when the plastic is largely non-porous.

Try this tutorial from emery - http://www.mlparena.com/archive/Forums//viewtopic/t=210048.html. This should work for whitening the floor of the castle and it should also help restore the pink [by simply bleaching the discolouration on the surface]. However a magic eraser is often good for this surface clean as well - the discolouring is normally a result of oils and dirt building up over time - so you are better to remove that coating than simply bleaching it.

As for the yellowing on the seams of the Castle, unfortunately that is glue. And the yellowing is due to the glue breaking down rather than a dirt coating of some kind. Yellowing glue is a bug bear for collectors of many things, including ponies of course. You can try sun fading or the H202 cream of course but I have never found either method successful. In fact the only way I have removed yellow glue before was to literally remove the glue itself with a glue solvent. You need to be careful when doing this though as the solvent can dissolve the glue which is holding the playset in place. So prepare to replace some glue if you do go that route.

[Cindercat]

Thanks for the link. I did read that while googling but it didn't include the next 2 pages.

Brilliant! I will go shopping for supplies : )