The Damn'd Thing, Tis Done

Like many other haunters this month, I've been spending a lot of my spare time setting up my yard display. What's held me up though are the cemetery entrance pillars I began early this summer. Ennui and life intruded more often than not, so having completed one pillar I left the second one until the last minute.

I finally finished it last week, as I detailed on my vlog, and also antiqued two lanterns that I mounted on each of them. So while that part was completed, it still necessitated wiring them all together. In all that was probably the simplest process, but I'm never satisfied with simple (as I may have mentioned before).

In the process of wiring the pillars, I thought they'd make a perfect spot to mount, well, spotlights to light up my cemetery. Last year things were rather dark using just the mini LED spots I made and I wanted to wash it in more light this year. I picked up a two-light socket at Walmart and mounted it to the back of one of the columns and it does bathe two-thirds of my cemetery in an eerie green light (I'll need to mount another one at the other end of my yard for full coverage).

So I wired that in as well, but while doing that I thought it might look cool to have red spot lights inside the pillars shining upwards. There's a large tree in front of my walkway that arches over the sidewalk (and  pillars) and I thought lighting the canopy in red light my look good too. Once again it was off to the store though this time I got a simple socket that I mounted to a piece of wood that spanned the interior of the pillar, wired that up, and finally plugged it all in.

Perhaps not perfect, but I think it provides a lot of color and effect to the scene so I'm pretty happy with it. But most importantly, it's completed, which means I can moved on to other things.

Hell Freezes Over

Despite my saying I would never, ever, ever vlog -- that is, post a video blog -- I went ahead and recorded one anyway, and posted it on my YouTube channel, which is GhoulishCop. That's the screen name I use on the haunt and Halloween forums.

Now Cecile B. DeMille has nothing to worry about with my freshman directorial debut (exactly how do you not constantly record your chin?) but it was fun. I tried to keep it under 10 minutes, because I think that's about the limit of anyone's attention span, so a lot ended up on the cutting room floor...which I'm sure you'll be thankful for.

Future episodes will be somewhat improved. I've already viewed my first vlog with a very critical eye, and though I posted it knowing there were a bunch of flaws, I figured if I didn't actually do it this time I'd probably never get around to it. So by forcing myself to post a video that I know has (many) areas for improvement, I'm actually pressuring myself into posting a second, better one so that the original isn't my entire legacy.



Having done this vlog, however, I have a lot more respect for those haunters who do this every day. I can assure you I won't torture you with daily updates of my exploits (pigs truly don't fly), if for no other reason than I'm just not that interesting. I'm sure my ramblings on this blog can make you think I'm something of a dullard at times (self-edit, self-edit!) so having to watch some stream of consciousness verbal diarrhea from me would undoubtedly be excruciating.

But what I would like my vlogs to cover would be my Halloween-related activities. I mean, that's the only reason someone might be remotely interested in watching them anyway so I'll limit them to covering that topic. The benefit to me is I think it might help me work on more projects. This blog helps me in some respect that way, keeping me interested in building things, and vlogging my progress might too. I know reading about your own haunt activities and viewing your videos gets me excited, so maybe in some small way I can do that for someone else.

Anyway, you've been forewarned: drivel ahead!

Pillar Update

Did a little more work on my cemetery pillars the past couple of days. I finished carving the stonework into the foam on all four sides and then painted it with a coat of Drylok. I opted not to use any Monster Mud because I didn't want to cover up any of the detail, and in the end it really wasn't necessary.

(What's interesting is how the blue ink from the foam mixed with the Drylok, yet in that one spot where there's an "S" it didn't. Nor was that visible before I started painting. Ooooooh! Spooky!)

After that coat dried I painted it all over with a coat of black paint. The goal will be to build up the paint layers in successively lighter colors with the end result that it looks like stone. We'll see.

Painting melted foam isn't as easy as you might think. Getting the brush into all the nooks and crannies that are formed is a time-sapping, laborious process. My neighbor was leaning out her window watching me and offering commentary on my work (Yes! That's what I need!) when she asked, "Wouldn't it be faster to spray paint it?" I  explained about the melting properties of spray paint on foam so that I'd still have to provide some sort of primer coat on it. Plus, spray paint can get expensive, though the basic flat black cans at Home Depot and Lowe's are cheap at just $0.99.

As I sat there jabbing my brush into the crevices, I suddenly wanted to smack myself upside the head. I have a compressor with a sprayer attachment! So I went hooked everything up, and in 5 minutes time had the entire pillar painted. What had taken me three times as long to do just half of one face of the pillar took me a third of the time to complete the rest of it.

Don't know why I drew a blank on the spray unit before, but I guess my neighbor's colloquy really was what I needed after all.

Brick by Brick

Between building my cemetery pillars and remodeling my basement, space has become a premium in my garage. I got 14 sheets of 5/8" sheetrock for free from a Yahoo! group called Freecycle and they're stacked to one side of the single-car space while my columns take up the middle. While I'm slowly making my way through the sheetrock, I figured if I'm really ever going to open up any room in the garage I'm going to have to get these columns done and put into storage.

So after lots of procrastination I began work on them again. The one column had the rigid foam insulation already applied while the other is still just the frame. Since I don't have space just yet to go get and store more insulation to skin the second one, I figured I'd do the design work on the first and at least get it out of the way.

Of course, working without any clear idea in mind as to the exact effect I want is difficult, but I decided that rather than brick it would have something of a stacked stone look. After laying out how big I wanted the courses to be, I measured and scored them, then began the laborious process of using a wood burning tool to make the mortar lines.

While that was actually quick enough, I didn't want neat, sharp lines since these are supposed to be aged pillars. So after making the outlines of the stones I wanted using a straight edge (the stones would have been straight and orderly when initially set), I went back and began "aged" them by rounding off corners and generally "unsmoothing" the neatness. That was the time consuming process.

Once that was done, I used a technique I had seen on a vlog by Steve's Haunted Yard where you spray water onto the foam and then hit it using a heat gun. It gives the foam a stone look almost instantly. Very cool! (I looked for but couldn't find the link to the exact video. Sorry.)

I only finished two sides of the column and will complete the other two today (hopefully). The second side took a little bit longer than the first because it was the side I have my access panel on and I wanted to disguise its presence so there are a number of smaller and misshapen stones there. While I think it hides it fairly well for the most part, it took a lot more time to do all those extra stones. But it also underscores why I built my foam-cutting tools: the score-with-a-razor technique left a lot to be desired. I'm confident my second column will come out much better using my hot wire cutters.

And while I probably don't have to coat them in Monster Mud before painting, I probably will anyway to cover up as many imperfections as possible. Then adding a bit of Drylok on top of that will give an additional layer of protection and stone-like appearance.

On a side note, it was actually odd using Drylok on a non-haunt-related project. While I don't have a problem of water leaks in my basement, since I'm putting up new walls on the exterior concrete block, I figured it was a bit of preventive maintenance to cover them in Drylok to inhibit any moisture that might want to work its way in after I put them up. Now that that's done, I'll be able to finish another corner of the laundry room. But that means it's almost time then to renovate the back stairwell which entails tearing down my old stairs and building new ones.

How the heck can I make Halloween props when my wife insists on me finishing the basement? That's the difference between doing the work yourself and hiring a contractor to come in. They'll be in and out quickly while I have the luxury of squeezing it in around skinning my cemetery pillars. I'm thinking though I may have to focus on getting the stairwell done quickly though. I might want clean clothes occasionally and I don't want to have to tell my wife, "Careful going to the basement, honey. That first step's a doozy!"

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.