Halloween has always been my favorite holiday. I have great memories from my childhood dressing up and doing all the fun fall things. My mom would decorate our whole house like a haunted house (if you’ve ever wondered where I get it from. She’s the person that inspired me to pursue a passion of mine for Interior Design. It mainly all started with Halloween!). She would also open all the windows in the house and turn the AC off when it got cooler outside. I loved the smell of the fall candles and the fall breeze that would come throughout our house.
At 25, nothing about this has changed! I still love dressing up and decorating the whole house. This year, I decided to tackle an outdoor Halloween project and I must say…. WOW! It was easy to accomplish and it looks amazing!
Things you’ll need for this DIY graveyard:
Shop everything I used for this DIY on my LTK account.
- 6 1x2x8 cut down to 1x2x6
- 7/8 Drill-bit, drill
- Screws
- 11 10′ 1/2 PVC pipe cut down to increments of 3′
- PVC cutter
- Foam insulation
- Foam sheets
- Hot glue + hot glue gun
- Black spray paint (6 cans)
- Gold spray paint (1 can)
- Grey spray paint, (3 cans light grey and 1 can dark grey)
- Bronze spray paint (1 can)
- Duck tape 2 rolls
- 2 Plastic pumpkin trick or treat buckets
- Black florals/Sticks spray painted black
- Floral Foam
- Moss
- Rocks/bricks
I started to gather my supplies at Home Depot. I picked up 6 1x2x6 (I had 8′ cut down to 6′) and used my 7/8 drill-bit to drill holes into the wood 6″ apart. 6″ from each end of the 1×2. It is VERY IMPORTANT that you check these 1x2s to make sure the wood is not already splitting. You’ll notice in the picture below, one of my pieces were already split, but we made it work anyway. This will save you a trip back to the store. I also picked up 11 pieces of 10′ pipe. You will end up with 11 holes in each 1×2. I started to drill 12 holes in each, but I noticed the farther you got to the ends drilling, the wood started to split. If you’re lucky, you may can get a worker to cut the PVC down for you. I was told that they couldn’t since there was so many. So, I bought a Flexible Tube Cutter and me and my husband cut them down into 3′ increments. If you’re not very strong, you’re going to need some extra help cutting the pipe.
After I drilled the holes and cut the pipe, I laid them all down on cardboard to spray paint. I wanted these to look like a real iron fence, so I spray painted them all black. The pipe was a little harder to spray paint. I had to keep flipping them after they dried to make sure I sprayed the whole thing and didn’t leave any white spots.
After I sprayed the railing, I started to put the columns together while the railing dried. I did not cut the sides of the column. I used them just as they came and taped them together. After I taped them together, I cut one of the pieces in the packs for the square bottom and top of the columns. I cut four squares to be 14.5″x16.5″ and two smaller squares to be 13.5″x14″ for the very top “decorative trim”.
I also spray painted these pumpkin pails from Walmart for the tops of the columns. I wanted to fill them with flowers to add a little something extra. I painted them gold first and then went back over with bronze streaks. I didn’t want any part of this graveyard to look perfect. I think it would’t look as spooky if it did.
After all of my pieces dried, I started putting the graveyard together. My husband drilled in screws on all the corners underneath the 1x2s so that the wood wouldn’t slip down over time. There was no need to screw in each pipe. This fence has enough stability once everything is in place. The finishing touch to the railing is the DIY finial. I simply cut out 3/4″ triangles and glued the sizes of of them so that they could slip onto each pipe.
Lastly, I added moss to areas on the columns to add that aged effect. I loved the way it made it look so much more authentic!
After everything was put together, we put our tombstones in. You can shop them over on my LTK page as well as all the materials I used to create this graveyard.
Tap on the pictures to pin them to your Pinterest board! If you recreate this, be sure to tag my Facebook page @Kaytlen Young or my Instagram @kaytlenpyoung.
Thanks so much for stopping by! I hope you have a great, spooky evening!
Xoxo,
Check out some of my other Halloween DIYs
