Halloween Spider

I set out to build a spider decoration on the outside of our house for Halloween. My 10 year old daughter enjoys decorating for just about any holiday and she really wanted something on the outside of our house for Halloween. We live in Southeast Texas and had a major freeze in February 2021. I decided to use some of the PVC leftover from replacing the pipes in a rental house as the main material for our giant spider.

Materials: PVC pipe and fittings (4-way, tee, 45 deg.), large black garbage bag, chicken wire, clothesline, leftover spray paint from another project, reflectors for eyes, small piece of plywood, wire

Tools: pipe cutter, tape measure, drill

The first step was to design the type of spider we wanted to build. My daughter went the easy route and drew one in the driveway with some sidewalk chalk. I also found one using Google Images. Her drawing was easier to follow because it was right beside our work area and didn't blow away with every little breeze.

Designer and idea person: my 10-yr-old daughter.

Manual labor: Me

Once we agreed on the design, she won, I had to find all of the necessary parts in my PVC parts bucket. I found most of what we needed, I still had to run to the hardware store for a few more connectors. I used the 4-way connectors and Tees for the main body with short pieces of PVC as the first part of the spider's legs. It was important to make sure the middle legs stuck out far enough to extend past the front and back legs. We used 45 degree elbow for the "knees" or joints of the legs.

Once the PVC was connected (no glue) it was evident that we needed to get the body attached quickly to keep everything together. I didn't use any pipe cement because I wanted to be able to use the PVC again if we had another freeze.

The first step was to use some wire to hold the parts together. All it took was a few simple wraps around the joints and legs and then tie them to the body. After that, I built a head and thorax out of chicken wire, which were quickly rejected by my daughter. Under her direction, I reshaped them until she was satisfied. We took a large black garbage bag and cut it in half to cover the chicken wire and the tied it down with some more wire. Once we felt like everything was going to hold together, we flipped the spider over and attached a small piece of plywood to the underside so that it could be attached to the spider web. I then used some spray paint, black hammered finish, and sprayed the entire spider so that it would be the same color over the body and legs. The final step was to add eyes. After I stole the reflectors from my kids' bikes, I was informed by my daughter that spiders have more than two eyes. Another trip to the hardware store and we had enough eyes to make the spider look scary.

This part was actually fun as I had to make sure the web was big enough to cover the window and strong enough to hold up the spider. I happened to have two different sizes (3/8" and 1/4") of clothesline from some old projects. The hard part was having to think like a spider to make a semi-realistic looking spider web. I used a 3/8" top rope and bottom rope to make the main outline of the octagonal shape I was instructed to make. Then I added two more 3/8" lines diagonally (45 degrees rotated from vertical). Finally I added one more 3/8" line horizontally across the middle. To fill out the spider web shape and form I used the 1/4" line to make the octagonal shape by attaching and pulling things into place. We also added some glow-in-the-dark webbing from our other Halloween decorations.

The final step of the project was to hang everything up on the front of the house. I used some nails that were already in the framing of the window from hanging Christmas decorations to hold everything up. I then drilled a hole in the plywood body of the spider so that I could attach it to the web. The final spider and web came out looking okay for a first try (It looked more like a cockroach than a spider), at least my daughter approved of the final result.