Folks that know me, know that my favorite holiday of the year is Halloween.
It’s the one time of the year when I can actually remove the mask and be normal for me.
So this year being semi retired and all right now, I decided to redo some of the props that we have that are old and worn out and build a few new ones.
I was looking through pinterest and came across a really cool arch built by Oak Lane Cemetary (you should really check it out).
Now being as to how I am on a really limited income at this time I decided to build my own kind of in that fashion, granted it’s no where near as cool as their’s but for about 40 dollars all together I think it came out great.
I had most of the things I needed laying around.
The post are actually some logs that I had from a tree that blew over in a storm a few months ago. I had been saving them to make some canes out of, but I figured this was a good project.
So basically I painted the bottoms of the logs so that hopefully they would last in the ground for a little while. Then dug two holes about 24 inches deep and stood the posts. I wanted them close to straight up and down, but not perfect to give the appearance of a worn out entry way.
I then cut the tops of the post at roughly a 30 degree angle and made two pieces to go toward the center, I secured them with 4 inch lag screws ( I had laying around) and placed another smaller log on top joining them all together, again with 4 inch lag screws.
The vines I made with pool noodles and a heat gun. the pool noodles were 1.00 $ each at the local Dollar General (or Dolla Gentral), so I bough 8 of them, then they were split, heated with a heat gun and stapled to the logs, then the smaller vines (more pool noodle sections) connecting them were heated and stuck in place and worked around until all were connected. The guys at Oak Lane Cemetary, go into more detail on building theirs and you can pretty much follow their directions or improvise like I did.
Next I sprayed everything with some old woodstain I had laying around. I had about six small cans that all had maybe two or three ounces of stain left so I mixed them all together and sprayed the post and noodles.
After that had time to dry I collected dead Spanish Moss, I have some growing in an oak tree and the old stuff turns brown and dies off allowing for the new growth, so I picked a bunch of the old stuff out of my tree and placed it on the arch.
So far total cost for this project was the 8 dollars for the pool noodles.
If I had to buy everything and not use left over stuff, then it might be around 20.
(Stain, 8 – 4 inch lag screws and 8 pool noodles).
Next thing was we had a skull prop that had three skulls and a sensor that makes noise and lights up so we added those to the top of the arch. This would later be changed.
Next I added a another set of skulls, 12 dollars at Big lots so for now the total cost is 20 bucks. Then I decided to add a gate.
I made the gate using 3/4 inch PVC and 1/2 CPVC pipe. and a heat gun. I had the 3/4 inch laying around but had to buy the 1/2 inch stuff 2.38$ for a ten foot section and I used 3 ten foot sections. Price tag now is at 27.14$.
I heated the 3/4 pipe to get my bends I could have bought elbows but that would have increased my cost. Then marked and drilled holes for the half inch pipe to fit through, adding a center pipe of 3/4 inch.
I had a piece of 1 inch pipe laying around so I cut out 4 sections and then split one side with a dremel using a cut of blade.
I heated the 1 inch pipe sections until they were very soft and laid them onto a piece of 3/4 and molded them around it with a clamp leaving about an inch of the pipe on each side sticking out nearly flat.
Then I painted the gate, had to buy a can of flat black 3.85$ so now I am at 31$.
After the black dried I dry brushed the gate with white and hung it on the post.
For the chain I used 3/4 pipe cut into roughly 1/4 to 1/2 inch lengths. Then split one side of every other link so that I could clip three links together at once. Then the whole thing was painted with silver spray paint. (I had some from another project.) I then sprayed it with a very thin (watered down) gray latex and wiped off the excess to make it look aged.
The keep out sign was just a piece of an old scrap 1X6 I cut out to attempt to make it look like a broken board (failed miserably on that part), I had some old skeletons that were broken and decided to use two leg bones and a skull from one of them.
The keep out was painted on with glow in the dark paint from walmart (2 dollars)
So my total cost was roughly about 33 dollars.
Now granted I had a lot of the stuff laying around left over from old jobs and projects so I put it to good use. Or at least I think I did.
The kids seem to love it.
Let me know what you think in the comment section below.
For a great selection of Halloween costumes for Adults and Children click here.
