Moving through November at a rapid pace. The good news is the delay in posting is due to spending some serious time in the digital darkroom to work up a number of posts from this year’s Halloween projects and the culmination into the Annual Haunted Trail of Tears. Now I just need to bang out some accompanying words and fire up the blog posting engine. I have already posted one of the new decorations for this year – the zombie silhouettes (link here). Next up, my first tombstone.
I am going to admit right up front that I didn’t get to finish all the planned steps on this project before the day of the Haunted Trail. This particular project was slotted further down the to-do list behind other haunted trail tasks that ended up taking way longer than expected. Most of the work was done after midnight when the other to-do list items were wrapped up for the night. Live on the edge, use power tools when you are exhausted and half awake.
As I hope you assumed, this tombstone is not actually made out of stone. The haunting forums are full of projects leveraging the thick 4×8 sheets of insulation panels. They are very easy to work with and best of all, weigh very little. I picked up a 2″ thick sheet. Two things to know about the insulation panels – well, at least the one I picked up. First, mine had tiny scores in it I didn’t see when I was looking at them. Guessing this allows them to cut to standard lengths easily, but for our use, results in a stress point. The second one is they are surprisingly expensive. The 4x8x2 one I opted for was $26. Putting that in perspective, a 4×8 sheet of 3/4 wood treated underlayment was only $14. Trading ease of working with for cost.
Hit the jump to read about all the steps in building this year’s addition to the Haunted Trail.
