Making props in our house is a combination of two things… a love of Halloween and a budget of a church mouse. It does take a bit of patience to find the right things for free or low cost, but it’s part of Halloween for us. Our treats are finding things we can use for props and our trick is making it work for next to nothing.
We found a new idea when we went to pick up a saw from someone who was giving it away. She had a stack of political signs from previous elections stacked up beside the saw. She pointed to a shed and said, “it’s a nice sturdy shed we made of wood, but we covered the walls entirely with the 4X8 political signs. They hold paint really well and they’re pretty much waterproof because they’re plastic.”
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In Oregon, it’s a state law that all political signs have to be down within a week after an election. So, if they’re still up alongside the road after the election, they’re fair game. We take the signs, but not the metal supports. We figure someone might actually want them. But at least we keep the signs from going into the landfill when the clean up crews take them down. (Which they rarely ever do within a week.)
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What we’re left with are 4X4 and 4X8 sheets of free coroplast. (That’s thin corrugated plastic.) We use it instead of lauan or other thin plywood. It creates lightweight props that hold up very well to the elements in our neck of the woods. Western Oregon is usually very wet, but only modestly windy in October. Those dealing with month long high winds might find it doesn't hold up as well. We don’t know, because we've not had any severe storms yet when they were out. But it did pretty good with 30 miles an hour winds and 50 mile an hour gusts the other day.
![Wall Wood Floor Flooring Tile]()
Our latest use of it is to create a group of mausoleum facades in front of our stairwell. We just put up a 4X8 sheet of stonework that is made from free wood from a nice gent who makes decks for a living, free paint from a family that had a bunch left over after painting their house, free coroplast thanks to the political advertising of various candidates, and free Styrofoam we got from our local furniture store.
The total cost of items we didn’t get for free is about five dollars worth of Gorilla glue and three bucks for specialty paint colors in those little acrylic bottles at hobby stores. We had another twelve dollars in hardware. The most expensive thing which we won’t ever do again was to buy a gallon of Drylok. It didn’t add anything to the sturdiness of the prop and we have props that have withstood our weather for over a decade covered in just regular latex paints which we got for free.
At any rate, Instructions are below for most of what we did, and I’ll keep posting tutorials for the other mausoleum pieces as they go up. but for now, we’re happy to say that we finally found something that politicians have done for us that makes us happy.
We found a new idea when we went to pick up a saw from someone who was giving it away. She had a stack of political signs from previous elections stacked up beside the saw. She pointed to a shed and said, “it’s a nice sturdy shed we made of wood, but we covered the walls entirely with the 4X8 political signs. They hold paint really well and they’re pretty much waterproof because they’re plastic.”
In Oregon, it’s a state law that all political signs have to be down within a week after an election. So, if they’re still up alongside the road after the election, they’re fair game. We take the signs, but not the metal supports. We figure someone might actually want them. But at least we keep the signs from going into the landfill when the clean up crews take them down. (Which they rarely ever do within a week.)
What we’re left with are 4X4 and 4X8 sheets of free coroplast. (That’s thin corrugated plastic.) We use it instead of lauan or other thin plywood. It creates lightweight props that hold up very well to the elements in our neck of the woods. Western Oregon is usually very wet, but only modestly windy in October. Those dealing with month long high winds might find it doesn't hold up as well. We don’t know, because we've not had any severe storms yet when they were out. But it did pretty good with 30 miles an hour winds and 50 mile an hour gusts the other day.
Our latest use of it is to create a group of mausoleum facades in front of our stairwell. We just put up a 4X8 sheet of stonework that is made from free wood from a nice gent who makes decks for a living, free paint from a family that had a bunch left over after painting their house, free coroplast thanks to the political advertising of various candidates, and free Styrofoam we got from our local furniture store.
The total cost of items we didn’t get for free is about five dollars worth of Gorilla glue and three bucks for specialty paint colors in those little acrylic bottles at hobby stores. We had another twelve dollars in hardware. The most expensive thing which we won’t ever do again was to buy a gallon of Drylok. It didn’t add anything to the sturdiness of the prop and we have props that have withstood our weather for over a decade covered in just regular latex paints which we got for free.
At any rate, Instructions are below for most of what we did, and I’ll keep posting tutorials for the other mausoleum pieces as they go up. but for now, we’re happy to say that we finally found something that politicians have done for us that makes us happy.
