Thread: enclosing your porch in plastic

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I have daytime trick or treat and it sucks bad- no darkness whatsoever. I have a large porch the width of the house and I was thinking about enclosing it in black plastic so i could have a dark area to set up a couple scenes and use some lighting and fog.

I was thinking about getting some thick black plastic in rolls from Lowes and using that, but they just rebuilt most of my porch last year so i want to avoid excessive stapling or screwing. Maybe i could roll the edges of the plastic into a 2x2, staple it to that, and then just use a couple screws in the ceiling and floor? I realize that short of enclosing my porch in plywood nothing is going to give complete darkness, but as long as i'm close it'd be good.

Any ideas would be awesome... I don't have a lot of money to spend on it so try to keep that in mind!

Good for you, Mikey, to keep up the Hallowe'en spirit despite Draconian rules in your area about DAYTIME Trick or Treating. Is nothing sacred?

Heavy polythene sheeting will effectively block out all light. You'll find that the tiniest pinhole will allow light to pass through, but that looks really cool in a room full of fog. Make sure you get the heaviest polythene you can get. If you're worried about durability, you can use black Landscape fabric.

Be persistent, brother, DO NOT GIVE UP!! To quote Winston Churchill, "Never give in, never give in, never give in."

You could also dumpster dive for some cardboard boxes and use them. It owuld be very easy to use some cheap black spray paint or even scene setters to cover it and make it look better.

Originally Posted by runmikeyrun

I have daytime trick or treat and it sucks bad- no darkness whatsoever. I have a large porch the width of the house and I was thinking about enclosing it in black plastic so i could have a dark area to set up a couple scenes and use some lighting and fog.

I was thinking about getting some thick black plastic in rolls from Lowes and using that, but they just rebuilt most of my porch last year so i want to avoid excessive stapling or screwing. Maybe i could roll the edges of the plastic into a 2x2, staple it to that, and then just use a couple screws in the ceiling and floor? I realize that short of enclosing my porch in plywood nothing is going to give complete darkness, but as long as i'm close it'd be good.

Any ideas would be awesome... I don't have a lot of money to spend on it so try to keep that in mind!

If you have a way to put eye hole screws in the top of the porch ceiling your could run a line (like a clothing line) through the eye hole screws and create a "drape" of long, black plastic sheeting panels. I'd weigh them down at the bottom with a weighted board or bricks so the panels don't fly in the wind.

If not eye hooks, maybe you could put up closet rod supports like one of these ( Closet Organizers - The Hardware Hut ) in the side porch walls and use PVC instead of a closet pole to create something like a shower rod that you can drape the black plastic over.

I did this last year with clothes line and black bed sheets. It made it totally dark inside and worked like a charm. it took about 3 hours to set up and came down in about 30 minutes. i'll see if i can find some pics and post them

here are some pics of my haunt from last year, now i wish we would have taken more exterior pics but you'll get the idea

I think your looking for non-invasive mounting ideas, and already sold on plastic coverings...

If you porch has square 'columns'/posts, build a 2x2 wood strip that would go around perimeter, but just a tad too short. When you screw the 2x2 wood together, it will squeeze the column, hopefully with marring it. Now mount additional strips to that and go from columns to columns, hanging plastic , etc.

Bite the bullet and put maybe just one/two holes somewhere that has a lag bolt or even a tension stud, then mount to that. I have two if these in my brickwork and attach various items each year.

When we built our house, I didn't want to staple to it, either. But the reality is... staple holes are tiny. If you want to cover them up, paint will do the trick.

I put up plastic every single year, and to help keep it on in the wind, I use lattice strips or furring strips on top of it, stapled with long staples.

Here are some pictures from several years ago...


Notice the lattice strips painted black. They really keep the plastic up in the wind. They are simply stapled to the posts. After years of practice, I started putting plastic on both the inside and outisde of the posts.

awesome, thanks for the ideas, keep em coming! This is helping a lot. For the folks who used plastic, what mil thickness did you use? It appears that whatever you used it's pretty opaque.

I can't recall the mil used, it was heavier than heavy duty garbage bags. I buy in the 10' x 50' or 100' rolls at Lowes. It is 99.9% opaque black plastic. Home Depot seems to only have clear.

It can be hard to find, so buy it when you see it. People really gobble it up around Halloween.
I've used the stuff to cover brightly colored walls in the house, too. It works great, and is cheaper than scene setters.

One thing we did was to use a combo of black plastic and scene setters. Stone wall on the bottom half, black plastic on the top.