Sunday, April 3, 2011

Pillar of the Community

I started working on cemetery entrance pillars for my haunt today. I had put together two quick ones two years ago, using bathroom paneling my neighbor was throwing out but have wanted something better. And taller. The others were just a couple of feet high and although they served their purpose, now it's time to do a better quality job.

There are a lot of options available on the forums, but I've always been impressed by the ones built by Spider Rider. They have an appropriately aged, corrupt look that I'd like to emulate.

How to build was the next decision. I knew I wasn't going the bathroom paneling way again and extruded foam insulation is a common alternative. Then I saw Macabre Rob's paper mache effort on the forums and thought that was right up my alley. He actually made his pillars from a cardboard box and paper mache bricks from small boxes he collected for recycling. The finished result is awesome!

I began collecting my own "bricks" -- until I realized  the monumental task this would become. I like cheap, but Bob's got a lot more patience than I do. Hard to believe the finished work began as cardboard and paper mache.

So I'll be opting for a more "traditional" insulation design. Below are a few of the early construction pictures.

The Process

The first thing I did was ripped a few 2x4's that had previously been part of my cheesy guillotine I threw together my first year haunting down to 2x2 thickness.


I then pre-drilled holes in the ends of the cross braces to prevent them from splitting.


I attached cross braces at the top and bottom, and then attached two braces about three quarters of the way up. This will be where my lanterns I picked up at Curby's will be attached.


 To provide a mounting surface for them, I attached a plywood board.


This was as far as I got today. Obviously I didn't tax myself too hard, but I've at least started. As I go along I'll continue to update the process and at some point I may finish and have a tutorial to share at the same time.

3 comments:

  1. Off to a great start. Looking forward to the final versions.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Looks good so far. Looking forward to seeing your finished piece!!

    Cheers!

    ReplyDelete
  3. It has begun! Looking forward to the finished result. I have to update my pillars this year as well, I used foe brick paneling from Lowes to do the center portion of my pillars and it was a huge time saver but I love the cobblestone look of Macabre Rob's pillars which are just awesome!

    ReplyDelete

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