Currently laid up a bit due to some outpatient surgery yesterday. Good news is the only physical requirement to blog is to simply be able to bang out words on a keyboard. Fortunately, the knife didn’t impact my ability to type so I can spend my downtime being more attentive to my loyal readers! Yesterday (also in recovery mode) I featured a new project for this year’s Haunted Trail. Actually, this year brought a large number of new features each of which will likely make their way here in the not too distant future. In fact, let’s go ahead a feature another new element – this time an animated decoration.
Yes, folks, another ground grabber. If you recall, last year I took my first attempt at one of these (link here). This year I wanted to improve upon that design and deliver a better product. I had been seeing a number of designs on the web (thank you Pinterest) and opted to work off a template from Yard Haunt (link here). I liked the fairly basic design and really liked the effect. Of course, I have to extend and improve upon it – it’s my nature.
I knew I needed a frame to rest the arm on. The Haunt plan used a block and what looked like nails to contain the arm itself. My preferred medium is PVC so clearly we needed to start there ha. There is always a struggle trying to find flat endcaps. Places like Lowes have gone to rounded tops which are useless when you want to fix them to a board or piece of plexiglass. Menards tends to have the flat ones when they actually have them in stock. Knowing how much of a pain that option was, it was time to spend some time in the PVC aisle and figure out an alternative. The results of that noodle time …
Hit the jump to read about how this all went together!