Dave Published on 04 July 2010

Parent Category: Halloween

The Wall Build

The next part of the photo-op project is to build the wall that our pirate captain is chained to and on display.

I looked at several different stone wall pictures and found 2 that I am going to use as a guide for my carved styrofoam wall.

This is the stone pattern.

This is the paint scheme.

The wall is going to be a framed out of wood and skinned with 1" foam sheathing. I will carve out the stone pattern in the foam, use a heat gun for texture and a few coats of paint it should look like stone.

 

I used 2" x 2" wood studs, some 2 1/2" screws, a couple piano hinges and 4" lag bolts.

The design I decided on was to have 2 half sections that folded in the middle with lag bolts holding the 2 section together. It would make it easier to store and hopefully easier to install.

The wall comes out to be 8 feet wide and 7 feet 1/2 inches (give or take a 1/4 inch).

 

 

Here you can see the 4 foot long piano hinges I installed along with the lag bolts.

It ended up being a very snug fit, so I may have to sand down the top & bottom so it slides in to place a little easier. With the foam added, I won't be able to beat on the frame with a hammer to get it into place.

 

 

The foam sheathing is glued down to the frame and waiting to dry. I'm going to give it a good 12 hours before I start trimming it to size. The it's on to laying out the stone pattern and cutting them all out.

The stonework pattern was done using a template to guide me in keeping everything uniform. I drew up a pattern, cut it out on brown craft paper and then traced it onto the foam.

The black marker you see is the "changes" I made after I traced everythong onto the foam. I am picky about things so I couldn't just leave it be ... go figure.

Next came time to carve/cut the stone pattern into the foam. I decided to use my hot knife instead of my Dremel. No real reason why, just something I feel gives a "better" look.

To give it a nice texture and feel of stone, I went with a little different approach. I've used my heat gun and water to give it the texture of stone. It works well, but not what I wanted for this project. This time I used 100% Acetone, put in a small spray bottle and lightly (and I mean lightly) spritzed the surface. You have to be very careful, it doesn't take much to ruin all that had work. As you can see in the close-up, the surface is very pitted ... like stone.

Next came the painting process. I only have 1 base coat of gray paint applied. After it dried, I knew I needed a second coat.

The detail painting will come next, for now ... this is as far as I've gotten.

 

 

I used a black paint wash, several different gray paints and the stone portion of the wall is completed.

With all the added texture form the acetone spray, it was a challenge to get all the paint inside the grooves. Next comes the detail paintings ...

 

 

So I wanted to add moss/lichens to the wall, attach the rusted metal pieces and finish the window.

I think I'm going to gove over the "rusted metal" pieces again with a brown paint wash to age it even more ... looks a little too "pink"????

Next are the final pics for this prop until I pull it out to set it up for Halloween.

 

 

The completed Photo-Op Wall project!