Coffin Carpentry (Part 2)

Back for part two! This picture is a weird angle, but I painted the inside purple. I thought a color would be fun, and since there are multiple types of wood, paint would work best here.

And the purple will go with the outside of the house, and the high lights on my dress.

Another quick project I did during all of this was to make a sign for the kiddos, asking them to only take two pieces of candy. Would they listen? Who knows. But hopefully with us on the porch, we could limit handful grabs.

I cut a small, leftover (and super thin) piece of MDF, and painted it with the gold paint I used on the Library ceiling.

I made a sign on the computer, printed it, and burned around the edges. Which also let me to learn how to turn off the smoke detector on the third floor, so that was a good skill learned! I used spray adhesive to put it on the board.

I went over it with a little bit of stain to age it, and then went over the whole thing with a poly. I don’t plan on using this again (because everyone is going to mask and get the vaccine so we can all be healthy again, right?). But it’s cute and easy for this year!

We wanted to be able to safely prop the lid open on the coffin, so Doug built a little post-hole stand.

He marked out the angle.

And cut the block to fit!

Here it is inside the coffin.

To attach the lid, we used a piano hinge, which was more nerve-wracking than I thought it would be. Making everything line up without messing up? Almost as scary as my piano final in college. (I am a terrible piano player. Thank goodness all my other musicianship skills outweighed that when I became a band director.)

We drilled and attached like every 6th hole, and then went back and filled in the middle ones.

And to get to some of them, we had to use a flexible drill bit. It was slow work, but it went well!

Ta Da!

With the lid closed.

 

Here’s with the post in place to hold up the lid.

 

I bought these handles YEARS ago, initially to use on the doors in the cabinetry for the front bedroom. As these would have been comical on that, they’ve been sitting in a drawer gathering dust since then.

But THIS IS THE ROLE THEY WERE MEANT TO PLAY.

Seriously. So cool.

It’s ridiculously pretty.

Of course, I painted the screws gold.

From the back.

Outside!

 

That day was really quite gorgeous.

The Welcoming Committee!

We did add two new friends to the side of the house this year!

They make a fun addition!

We both masked (of course) for the evening. To make it work with our costumes, I made the same double layer mask with pocket, nose wire, and filter that I’ve sewn and used all year. But I added lace to the front.

The mask underneath was cream, so you could maybe pretend like it was my skin under there?

The mask on its own.

Without the mask, I added a mourning veil to my dress this year, instead of a hat!

With the mask and veil, I’m super covered up!

For Doug, I ordered a plague mask off of Etsy. And he could wear his mask (also sewn by me) underneath.

Without mask selfie!

Everyone is ready to go!

 

This is about half the candy we went through. We still had well over 1,000 kids come through that night!

Our neighbor across the street was nice enough to take a couple of pictures from afar for us!

It was a weird Halloween. Sitting (or standing) on the porch and not interacting with people felt like we were just watching it on TV. And we SO missed having our friends over.  But we’re glad we kept safe, and hope that everyone else keeps safe as we head into Thanksgiving and Christmas.

 

I also used my TinType app to make some of the pictures old-timey. Enjoy!

Please be safe this Thanksgiving and Christmas!