Thread: "Where do you store all this stuff?"

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I say that if I have a conversation with a visitor that is longer than 30 seconds,100% of the time this question is asked. Here in Ca, a basement is very, very, very rare. I personally have never heard of a basement in a Ca house built since 1960.

One of the tricks I use is the ability to rollup my walls.

I'm sure you recognize the Scene Setter castle rock sheets. If you do, you also know that they are very thin and cannot withstand a strong breeze without substantial support. We get the 4 mil black plastic paint protection rolls at Home depot. I don't recall the measurements of the ones we use, but I know it is available in different widths and lengths.

We build the frame outline of our structure with 2x4s (screwed, never nailed). Each length is labeled at each end plus any intersection. Metal Simpson brackets are used extensively (outlines drawn on 2x4s) but nothing is to code.

Structure up, the 4mil is cut 16 inches taller than the wall. Roll 8 inches onto a 1x2 at the top and another at the bottom of the wall attach to the 2x4 structure. We lightly spray 3M adhesive onto the black plastic and apply the Scene Setter. Start at the bottom allowing it to drag to the ground. Go to the top and there will be an overlap in the middle unless the wall is 8 feet tall. Be certain to use a solid line of adhesive along the edges of the wall and at the overlap. Be carefull, too much adhesive can melt the scene setter. Too little won't hold. The learning curve is short. We also apply another Scene Setter pattern on the inside of the wall.

The Halloween season where I live ALWAYS, without fail, will have one rainstorm, and one wind storm (Santa Ana winds). The wind will usually hit gusts of 50 and up to 70 MPH. One morning I walked out the front door to see the first year version of the above haunt with the side walls horizontal. They had held at the top, but the wind had sheared off the bottom of each wall.

My son (about 11 at the time) offered up a great solution. When the winds stopped, we patched the bottom of the walls, sprayed some PVC pipes with rust and black colored primer and attached them vertically to the top and bottom 1x2s on the inside of each wall - about 15 inches appart. My son it 18 now and we've yet to have even any tares or rips.

All of these walls and those on the other side, plus those on the three car garage doors roll up and are stored in a 1 x 2 x 8 foot area. The roof folds up and stores on top of them.

Each year I can't wait to see what new Scene Setters patterns are available, and try to think of a use for them in my haunt.

Hope someone else gets inspired.

I think the scene setters were a terrific idea from whoever it was that came up with them. They cover a lot of ground & enhance your scene so much & the price is easy to live with. It appears that each year we are getting more styles of them too. Plus their easy storage helps a lot.

As far as storing things.......I have a bit of it everywhere! The garage, the shed. outside the shed, under all the beds in my house, on the top shelves in my pantry, a bit in my laundry room and now its taking over my office as I keep the projects I'm working on in there. Our basement is a research & developement area for new candy recipes & also where we manufacture our products so that is off limits to everything because it is a state inspected kitchen and has to be spotless at all times.

My office is pretty full of the candy business stuff but still I've got a huge closet down there that is full of xmas & halloween stuff and models (hubbys toys). Right now I have a small table in there where in my spare time I work on small projects, like right now I'm working on the toe pincher casket candy boxes. Assembling them & such. My deranged brides dress is hanging in there, I have several different shapes of tombstones in there as I was deciding on fonts & epitaphs for them & now I'm getting ready to move the coffin from the contest in there!!

Oh yes & there is 2 cases of newspaper which i need to start cutting up for paper mache to make those rocks that are going to cover our floodlights outside this season....aaahhhh & lastly is all the items I'm using to decorate the bottles & jars for my spell & potion room. But somehow the case with the bottles & jars got stashed somewhere in the garage so we are looking for that.

We have talked about adding onto the shed in the yard, its a big 2 story building that houses everything that should be in the garage. As we continue work on the halloween projects we are going to have to do something because when the hearse & mauseleum get built (2009 projects) we could be starting to get in trouble.

My plan is to build my haunt into something that we use more than just for halloween as I would like to have a community celebration doing of some kind that would be sponsered by my candy business(which we just started building) & my neighbor whose family is famous around here for their years & years of being in the moonshine business. Our road here is a main road and its named after his family. Years ago they owned acres & acres of this land around here.
So as you can see we will most likely be needing space to store more stuff.

Actually we still have room for more things so we are not to worried as yet!

Muf

P.S. I should mention that we are exploring the use of the ceilings next. Raven Manor stores his fence panels & mauseleum stuff on racks he has built off the ceiling in his garage.

Here all four corners of my garage plus the extra little room! This is the mess I have to tackle before sept. so we can add 2 more halloween rooms out there!

Lt we had some pretty lenghtly threads not to long ago on this subject so if ya get a chance scroll up to the top of the page & open the search section......type in "storing stuff" & you will find a revelation of ideas!!lol

Muf

i have a deticated 21x18 workshop in the basement that my stuff is in and also have the 4x4 racks that hang from the ceiling

Lt Scare...I too have problems with the wind and rain and is usally the day before or the night of the show..I like your ideal but still trying to figure them out if you have close up pic. of how to the pvc to save the plastic sence setting please show thanks alot...also my back yard two 12 x 16 shed one for Halloween and one for Christmas...my thinking is to use a enclose nursery trailer 10ft hight roof around 30ft long then store at my shop when not needed at home..Thanks Howard..PS love the pics

The following is a bad pic, but if you look closely above the hook head and across the top to the right and down again, you will see a rusty looking pipe. That's the PVC screwed to the top 1x2. I think I miss-spoke earlier - the bottom of the PVC is anchred with 18" rebar half in the ground next to the bottom edge of the wall. I think we used the rebar because it was easier than attaching to the base 1x2 in tight places where the drill motor didn't fit.

The velocity of the wind from the outside is stopped by the inside pipes. The two walls keep the inside pressure low enough not to threaten the strength of the 4mil. It worked great even before we put a roof on it.

Hope this helps.

Muffy, I want your garage !! My wife puts a car (of all things!) in ours, so I have to resort to storing stuff in the attic, shed and where ever I can find space !

THANKS so much I got to try that this is the only thing that bums me out ..wind + rain = damage..all help is welcome Thanks Howard

it's funny and scary at the same time i have half the material that most of you have and i am in panic of where i can store it all . I got myself a little pvc shed and i will be able to clear the garage of my stuff Lyn the owner of the house is nice enough to let me store my halloween and Christmas decoration for now .I am afraid how much thing i will end up with in somethng like 2 years from now .....

i will post pics of my work area tomorrow, i just got done building another armature and 16 more feet of fence to add to the mess