Thread: Cheap & easy arched gateway.

Tweet

Here’s how I made an entrance archway. Among the goals I had was cheap, reusable, easy to make, easy to store for future use, and oh yeah cheap.

I thought about buying the halloween store offering this year, I like it a lot, but could not justify that much money for cardboard. Not in humid Florida anyway.

So I went to Lowes, and bought:
Three 4’ x 8’ x 1/8” hardboard panels item #15483 for $6.74 ea.
Three 1” x 2” x 8” firing strips, around a dollar ea on sale.
Two caulking gun tubes of liquid nails, about $4 ea.
One gallon of “oops” some shade of gray flat latex paint. $5
One quart of “oops” more or less black wood stain, paint would have been ok too.
Two paint rollers, $2 ea.
Some junk was on hand, surplus dark cloth (for hinge strips), screws, styrofoam.
I used a surplus piece of plywood for the arch sign, but a $10 – $15, 3/8” thick piece of plywood is another option. (originally I tried to use a 4th piece of hardboard for sign, but that seemed too flexible once words cut out, not a good choice.)

I took advantage of Lowes offer to make 2 cuts for free on their big saw table.
First cut, stack all three 1/8” thick panels, cut at the 2’ level (8’ cut down the middle).
Remove two of the 2’ x 8’ pieces from the saw.
Second cut, remaining 4 pieces at 1’ level. (8’ cut down the middle).
You now should have two 2’ x 8’ pieces, and eight 1’ x 8’ pieces from the 3 panels in two free cuts, and no saw dust to clean up.

To make the two bases:
I taped the two 2’ x 8’ panels together, so both bases copies could be cutout at the same time. I marked one long side off every 2 feet along the edge, lets call that bottom edge and thos the bottom marks. Then at the top edge marked 1 foot intervals. From the first, third, fifth, seventh 1 foot marks I measured and made another mark 6 and ¼” to it’s left and again to it’s right, lets call these top marks.
Then I drew a line from the top marks to the nearest 2’ interval bottom mark.
This should result in you having drawn 4 equal sized base pieces 24” across the bottom, and 12.5” across the top (the extra ½” allows the base to wrap around the column).
Cut along the lines and you should get the 8 pieces needed to make 2 bases.

I cut some surplus dark cloth and used the liquid nails to glue them down at the cuts,
Attaching panel pieces, but making them flexible. I placed a 3’ wide strip of wax paper under the seams to prevent gluing the panels to the driveway if the liquid nails seeped through.

To create the sign I type the text in the computer and curved it on an arc. Then I output it and uploaded to a free website called blockposters. They ask you what size you would like to print and then create a multipage pdf that you download, print, and tape together to create giant graphic templates or posters. I used a small jigsaw to cut it out.

I roller painted the sides without the cloth gray.
Firing strips were screwed to 1 side of each assembly, and will close them with screws along other edge when assembling for use.
I used a sponge with black paint to darken the grey, and painted the arch sign with a brush. I plan to attach a small sign to a column each year, depending on how it’s to be used that year. This year it’s Raven Woods cemetery, next year maybe Raven Woods asylum, or …

The prop pretty well met the goals, cheap, easy to make (didn’t even use the word trapezoid), easy to setup / take down, and lies flat for storage.

I may change a few things next year, better painted stone, and column tops.
But that’s for next year.
Happy Halloween.

sounds great but do you have a picture of the assembled gate??

Didi I miss it?

Hi Ilaina, the rest of the pics are up now. I got hosed up during the uploading process.
1st_look is the finished prop.

Looks great and good priced. AWESOME

Nice work I like it!!!

So this stores flat with the hinges? If so, I love that idea

Yes it's made to store flat. If I take the screws out of both sides of the firing strips (recall that's how it's closed into a column.) it goes even flatter, then all columns and bases together are only 1/2" thick (1/8" hardboard panels). The "RAVENS WOOD" sign is 3/8" thick. If the column panels are folded in half rather than completely flat then the stack is closer to 2' wide by 8' long, and only about 1" thick. The cloth hinges make a big difference, in both cost and space. The caps are a couple inch thick styrofoam (which will be revisited next year).