The Fence
First you go to the marina and steal the foam from under their docks. If you can't swim then you should ask them if you can have any old foam. They've usually got a pile that they'd rather have you take away then have to pay to haul to the dump. If you live in the area around me though forget I said that. I've told too many people locally and now I can't get anymore for me. Go to the docks in Tacoma.
Above is the pieces that I cut into 41" tall pieces that are 6" x 6" around. I paint them white for Christmas every year so the first thing I have to do is paint them black again. I've used an airless sprayer in the past to paint them but paint rollers work just as well and you don't to cover your whole yard in plastic. This year I bought a compressor and a paint gun so I had to try it out. Next year I'll roller them. It's quicker.
Here's Jimmy Hoza again trying out the new spray gun. We've got some seriously thick paint on these posts.
I spray paint my fence section pieces. Here's me doing the classic rattle can method. Spring the extra buck for the better black paint. I bought a bunch of the .98 a can black and it was practically transparent. $1.98 will get you a good paint for a reasonable price. I blow through about 20 cans of black spray paint in the months of September and October.
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This is a photo from last years assembly. On the left you can see where we stood the posts up. I spaced them about 56" apart. I drove stakes into the bottoms of them first then removed them. I then drove the stake into the ground and set the post on top of it. I cut 1/2" pvc pipe into five foot sections and pushed them into the foam posts to form the crossbars. Bottom one is six inches from the ground and top one is about four inches from the top. These formed the crossbars for the uprights pieces of pvc to be screwed to. Just a warning. Place your crossbars as you go. Don't try to put up all the posts first then put up your crossbars after all the posts are in place. You'd be surprised how things shift and you'll wind up mad as heck if you have to move a bunch of posts. Trust me on this one.
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Now I know there's harder ways to do this but I'm lazy so all I did was stood the upright sections of pvc pipe up against the front of the crossbar and used my cordless drill to screw 1" drywall screws from the back of the crossbar through to the upright. I then hot glue skull whistles into the tops of the uprights for some great looking finials. When the season is over you just grab your 5 foot section of fence in the middle give a solid tug and it pops out in one piece. Next year your fence goes up in record time because the hard work is all done for you. I just stored these sections in my garage rafters. The post had to be painted this year since they were white from Christmas but the fence sections themselves just needed touch-ups. The skull finials all needed repainted of course since I'm too lazy to paint them with anything other than spray paint. Oh well.
This years fence with the gates are over 125 feet long. Here it starts at the left side of the property. You can see the edge of the Teeter Totter of Terror and the swingset that the skeletons will be swinging on this year.
A quick and fuzzy photo of what the original Pillars of Pains look like this year. I brought the red on them out a little more than I had last year. I've got a better feel for what the neighbors will tolerate. I had to rebuild the gate on the right side this year. Some very intoxicated heathen thought it was a real gate and tried to lay across the top of it last year. Since it's made out of styrofoam it blew to pieces. I'll post instructions on another page on how to make the foam gates. These open and close just like the real thing. Further enhances the illusion that the whole fence and gates are real.
Another fuzzy photo special. It was raining while I was running around with the digital camera. That and the traffic on this road is abysmal. I'd have to wait two to three minutes to cross and then again as long to be able to snap the photo.
We have a utility pole in the yard so we angled the fence and headed for the bent trunked Cedrus Deodora and just leaned a post over to match the angle of the trunk. made a cool looking fence section.
Pretty cool if you ask me. We didn't fence off this part of the yard last year and people tried to enter this way. We fixed that this year as the next photo will show.
We came all the way down the side of the yard and actually built a fence section over the bent trunk of a Port Orford Cedar. It looks totally secure from the road. Every other person who stops to look and asks questions wants to know if the fence is permanent.
The only problem with foam is the mess it makes in your yard. There's a couple of ways to deal with it. Ignore it, pick it up one little piece at a time or break out the shop vac and convince the neighbors once and for all that you're insane. You can see which option I chose.
How to Build your own Pillars of Pain.