Hallowe'en Decorations

No better ideas came to me in the night, so today I hooked up the ghost lights with cloth-wrapped wires. Two tiny holes between shingles worked fine. A dab of paint camouflaged the tiny bit of wire that showed.

Click on the photos to see details, like the spider to the right of the attic window. The little pumpkins on the garland and stacked by the suit of armor are putka pods. I bought a whole bag of them for $1 some years ago. They are seed pods from an Australian tree -- Glochidion ferdinandi --  commonly known as the cheese tree. The squiggly lines on the porch posts don't stand out as much as they did at first. I had fun filling the window boxes. Found some pale black-eyed susans, each with a black leaf, in the box of landscaping material that have just the right dead air about them. 

The ghost lights reached all around the porch and across the front of the second level, with one little guy nipping around the corner. The big witch is hot glued onto the roof.

The chimney side took the longest to do. The vines are made of lycopodium. The twisted stems added to the atmosphere, and the greenery help to camouflage the wires as the ghosts climbed from the porch to the upper story. I think the plastic figures -- the skeleton in the window box, bug on the chimney just below the roof -- are meant to glow in the dark. They haven't been in bright light long enough to test the theory. Their translucency adds to the spookiness.

On the back (open side), the edges of the walls & ceiling/floor need to be capped with a U-channel, and the opening at ground level needs to be closed up some way. There's that to do and a bit more decorating outside. I've made that the next priority, although truth be told, I'd rather be working on the inside.

Lights! Camera! Action!

Well, lights and camera, anyway. Today I happened into Big Lots in search of a new shower curtain. They didn't have one I liked, but in wandering through the seasonal aisle I spotted a string of 20 LED lights in the shape of cheerful little ghosts. They were too cute to pass up, and since I hadn't figured out any kind of lighting system for the Haunted House, I bought a string.

The little perishers are rather awkward to work with, as they are bound by plastic coated triple wires that don't take kindly to holding a bend. I'd hoped to have the ghosts floating around inside, but without doing some major cutting to move the string from room to room, it just wasn't possible.

So, the ghosts have formed a greeting committee outside. Is it a warning-off committee or welcoming committee? I think the latter; they do babble on a lot in a friendly way. The photos show the string taped in place. The porch roof will mask the wires on the ground floor, and the Washington 2.0 has a nice overhang on the upper floor where the wires can be tucked away. Tomorrow I have to figure out how the string will be fastened. I'm thinking a series of two small holes drilled in the porch roof and the attic floor where it overhangs, then a thin wire around the light wires and twist to fasten. The twisted bit won't be seen in the attic, and the twisted wire on the porch roof can probably be hidden under a shingle or masked with moss or a spider or something.

I may have a better idea by tomorrow. (Suggestions welcome!)

I pulled out all of the autumn/Hallowe'en decorations I could find. Once the lights are fixed in place, I can start filling window boxes and adding shrubbery and vines to the house, along with a whole herd of spiders and bats and ...

If you ignore the camera glare, the lights shine a nice spooky blue. It looks really good in real life.

I have a couple of battery operated tea lights in the accessories box. Somehow they'll find a place inside. Don't want too much light on the subject. Might frighten the skeletons!

Ceiling Repainted & Some Lights Installed

I like the new ceiling color much better than that ugly, dirty gray. The photo distorts the color a bit. The walls are really a slightly deeper hue and the ceiling a little lighter. It's a nice, clean look.

In the photo above, you can see that the back light beam has been installed. It is glued to the brackets, but nowhere else. I think if the worst happens and the beam needs to be removed, a gentle wiggle of an eXacto knife will pop it loose from the bracket.

In the next photo, you can see the front light beam, mounted in the same way. Compare the clean look with the beam and spotlights in the photo of Marie Laveau's house at the top of the blog. When we get back to New Orleans, I believe Marie will be in for a wiring update.

I drilled holes in the ceiling and poked the wires up.* The socket strip and other electrical elements will hide under this lid. The extension cord will poke through the notch on the back side of the lid, so all that will show will be the cord.

There is one more electrical element to be installed inside, the floor lamp. Can't really do that until the floor is installed. A couple sections of daylight LEDs will be installed between the back (window) wall and the outside of the box. The lighting will be simple, but I think effective.

*There's a story about the wiring. I drilled the hole close to the back beam, so it would be hidden from view. Problem was, I couldn't see it to thread the wire through, and it is so tight that I couldn't get my head in far enough to be helpful. Thought about using a mirror, but there wasn't one handy. I switched my cell phone to camera mode and held it over the hole while threading the wire through with the other hand. I could hardly stand being in the same room with such a clever person!

Roombox Lights!

Other than the one floor lamp in the work area, the lights for the roombox will be indirect LED lights. These are the kind that come in a strip. Some will hide behind a beam installed above the railing in back and the rest will be installed behind a strip at the front of the box. This is a new breed of lighting for me and took a little experimentation.

In keeping with my efforts to use what I have on hand as much as possible, I rummaged through the electrical toolbox and found a plug-in strip, brads, a bag of cords and plugs cut from lights used in other projects. (I soldered their wires to a tapewire, thus having plugs and cords left over.)

This is my test piece, one section of the light strip wired with a plug. The wires are just wrapped around brads for this test. I'll solder them for the actual installation. The lights have a sticky back back for mounting, but I didn't want this test to be permanent so I taped it to a short piece of the beam.

Here is the test. Can't tell you how excited I was when both the LED and lamp both lighted on the first try.  The beam will extend from side to side. The light here is from the three tiny LEDs on the test strip. I think two 3-light sections will be more than adequate to light this small area. The instructions say the lights are equal to a 120-degree spotlight. In the test they are aimed toward the back wall. In the actual installation, I'll angle them downward a bit. 

The socket strip is constructed in four sections, each with its own switch, so I could turn off the lamp and leave the overhead and/or outside lights on if the mood strikes. And the ceiling fan can have its own control, too, if it is linked to the 12v system.

Now that I know the electrical installation is within the realm of possibility, the ceiling needs to be installed. I tested a wash of thinned paint and like the effect. It is the same Ceramcoat Dove Gray that is used on the trim.

This is what it will look like against the beams and crown molding. The wash is still wet in this picture. I want to give the whole ceiling a coat of satin finish polyacrylic so it will have a metalic look, like a pressed tin ceiling.

Tomorrow the ceiling will go in, followed by the lighted beams and the crown molding. That's the plan, anyway.