Battling it out

I've been arguing with myself for the past 24 hours. Yesterday's post was so generic and LAZY, and I've been regretting it all day. I mean, how am I going to have a blog where I share all of my DIY stuff without saying HOW I DIY'd it?! And there's a little piece of the post where I KIND OF described what I did, but it was NOT very descriptive and.. When I re read it, I think I sound like a boring douche that didn't want to take the time to share my process. 

So, while I can't go through EVERY detail, since some of it was just dumb luck, I'm going to go just a tad more into how I did it. And maybe this will clear my conscience a little.

To start, I built the two bottom boxes. I still had absolutely NO idea where I was going with this, what I wanted it to look like.. OR any plans for ANYTHING, really.

 The whole thing was done with this little helper screaming and getting in my way cheering me on the whole time.

































Then I went to Lowe's and had them cut a board of 1/4" OSB to the size of my panels (they're 16" wide x OhCrapIDon'tRemember  about 25" tall). While I was there, I also picked up some insulating foam to try to create a faux rock facade. This was actually my friend's idea, because I could not think of anything that I could make fake rocks from that would be lightweight and able to be spray painted. THANKS, MEG!!!!!

I ended up using 2 cans of this stuff.






























When you sprayed this to make the shape of the rocks, you could TOTALLY see the spray path you took. Like... ALL of the lines were visible.

Rocks don't have these perfectly spaced swirls, so I grabbed a bottle of water, chugged it, and used the top of it to dab over the lines.. to make more of a rocky texture.

Whiles those dried, I went out back and threw together two more boxes, longer and thinner than the others.

Actually, I think I did one, got bored, and went back into the garage to put the OSB on the bottom boxes... I THINK... because... why else would there only be one in that picture?

ANYHOW!

By this time, i had formed a picture as to what I was wanting, and I knew that I wanted some "ledges" on the top of the bottom boxes made out of wood, and... at THAT time.. I wanted them to overhang.

I was planning on using 1x4s (left over from the sandbox) and 1x2s to create the ledge. But after I saw it with the 1x4s, laziness set it, it looked fine, so I just left it like that.

In case you couldn't tell, I had spray painted the "rocks" and the OSB by now :-p

I used a few different techniques to try to make the rocks look good, but I really don't think any of them worked. So, like I said before, I'll work on them next year. My plan is to spray paint  the entire base a cream color (to simulate grout) and THEN paint the rocks a brownish gray. The brownish/gray on the gray just makes them look very BLAH. At least they look good when it's dark!!! HA!

Obviously I stained the top columns and the "ledges" - no photos. I was thinking I'd end up painting them, so I wasn't banking on the stain lookin' good.

Procrastination took over, and I really dreaded drilling over a hundred holes for christmas lights... so that took a few more days! I did one a few days ago, got high from the poly, and really didn't think I'd get the motivation to doing the second one. 

Then, I either had to clean my house or drill the holes... So guess which one I chose!

After both of the columns were finished, and it actually looked like it might come together well, I actually had a ton of motivation! So I drew out the shape for a cemetery sign, cut it out and spray painted it (yes, seriously, I actually did THREE things without stopping!).

The next day (after the paint dried) I figured out the letter sizing/spacing and drew everything out for the sign. I even painted it... And failed to notice that I'd misspelled the most important word.

MAN I'm awesome!

From there, I put it all together, managed to take a crappy picture to send to my sister,

 and then a storm came and blew it down...

Ohhhhhh JOY! :-D

Lucky for me, I'd had the forethought to realize that the pieces needed to be secured together, I just hadn't DONE it yet. So I didn't have to do anything but shove the lights back in and put everything back up.

To secure it, I glued a couple of 2x3s to the top of the base, and screwed through the frame of the top pieces into the 2x3s. It's amazing what  screw or two can do ;-)

Anyhow, I had to run out there to take the above photo, so I figured I might as well show ya what else I've done.

Added a hanging skull ($8 from Party City - I think he's SO COOL!) and threw a black urn that I had near my front door in front of the crappy fake rocks on the right side (those were seriously the worst ones, and they're RIGHT UP FRONT! EEK!)

Anyhow, there ya have it!

AND I DON'T FEEL BAD ANYMORE!!!  Whew.

Have a great weekend!