make it yourself

Overflowing Barrels

The same three drums with the thing that actually came out of them. A run of neon green ooze pouring from the split and down the side, a skeleton arm reaching out of the ooze, and green light raking up it from the grass. Expanding foam does the sculpting and gravity does the shaping, so it looks poured rather than modelled.

• $114 ish
• 4 hrs start to finish
• total beginner
• 2' 6" tall when done

grab this stuff

What you need

• 3× 32 gallon plastic trash can with a lid, no wheels $45
• 2× Plastic-bonding spray paint, yellow $14
• Flat black and rust-brown craft paint $5
• Green LED puck lights, battery, 3 pack $14
• 2× Expanding polyurethane foam, 12 oz can $14
• Fluorescent green acrylic craft paint $7
• Plastic skeleton, 5 ft (you only need the top half) $15
• Painter's tape and a sheet of card for the stencil you have these
• All in $114

Tools, and that is it

• A craft knife or a jigsaw
• Scissors
• A drill, for the drain holes
• Disposable gloves, and more of them than you think
• A spray bottle of water, for curing the foam
• Something heavy for each upright can: paving slabs, bags of sand or buckets of gravel

here we go

How to make it

1. Buy cans, not barrels

   A 32 gallon plastic trash can is almost exactly the diameter of a 55 gallon drum and about two thirds the height. It already has the horizontal ribs a drum has and it is weatherproof by design. Get the plain kind with no wheels, and keep the lids: a drum has a closed top.

   oops-proofing

   Avoid anything with a wheel housing molded into the base. It is the one detail that says trash can rather than drum, it is on the side you will end up facing the street, and you cannot paint it out.

2. Or find a real drum secondhand, which is better and often cheaper

   Check Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist for a used 55 gallon food-grade plastic drum or a rain barrel. Car washes, breweries, bakeries and food plants go through them and sell them off for ten to twenty-five dollars, usually blue, usually filthy, which for this build is a head start rather than a problem. A real drum has straight sides, so it needs none of the paint tricks in the steps below and just reads correctly on its own. Wash it out and paint over the blue.

   oops-proofing

   Do not buy a NEW rain barrel for this. They run sixty to a hundred and twenty dollars each, which is more than all three trash cans together, and once it is painted yellow and covered in rust streaks nobody can tell what you paid. And check what was in it before you buy: food-grade only, and never anything that held a solvent or a farm chemical, whatever the price is.

3. One can, one drum. Do not join them together

   Three cans, three separate drums. Do not stack them or fasten them to each other: a trash can is tapered and a drum is not, and every way of joining two of them leaves an outline that is obviously two trash cans. Stand two upright at different angles and lay the third on its side, tipped so the open end faces the walk. Push the upright ones an inch into the grass, which hides the narrow base and settles them at the same time. Keep the lids. A drum has a closed top, and an open can reads as an open can. If a can came without one, stand that one upside down instead so its closed base is what shows.

   oops-proofing

   The taper is the only thing that gives these away, and paint fixes it, not carpentry. Two horizontal bands where a real drum carries its rolling hoops will tell the eye "parallel sides" far louder than the actual outline tells it otherwise. That is a later step and it is where the effort belongs.

4. Cut the split before you paint

   Pick one upright can and cut a rough gash about eight inches long in its shoulder, up near the top, then push the edges outward so it gapes. That is where the ooze comes out, and one split across three drums is plenty: the other two are what it is spilling away from. Drill a few small holes in the base of every can so rain drains instead of collecting.

   oops-proofing

   Tear it, do not slice it. A clean straight cut looks like a slot somebody cut. Score it, then flex the plastic until it splits along the score and leave the edges ragged. Make it bigger than feels right, too. The foam has to come through it, and a neat little slot chokes the run down to a dribble.

5. The paint does the heavy lifting

   Two light coats of yellow, and the can must say it bonds to plastic or it peels off in sheets in the first cold week. Then the part that matters: tape off two horizontal bands, one about a third down from the top and one a third up from the bottom, and paint them a darker shade. Those are the rolling hoops every steel drum carries. Two level horizontal lines read as parallel sides, and they do more to kill the taper than any amount of building would. Once that is dry, dry-brush flat black round the ribs and rust-brown in streaks running straight down from the rim. Straight down, because vertical streaks say vertical sides. Aim for about twenty per cent coverage and stop.

   oops-proofing

   New and clean is the failure here. A pristine yellow barrel reads as a prop; a filthy one reads as something that has been sitting somewhere it should not have been. Use a level or a strip of tape wrapped right round for the bands. A hoop that wanders up or down as it goes round the can draws the eye straight to the taper, which is the one thing it is there to hide.

6. Tape the hazard symbol, never freehand it

   Cut a trefoil out of card, tape it on and spray through it. Put one on each barrel, all at different angles and one of them half wrapped round a rib so it distorts.

   oops-proofing

   A hand-painted radiation symbol reads as a hand-painted radiation symbol from thirty feet away. It is three wedges round a circle and the eye knows the proportions, so any wobble is obvious. Ten minutes with a knife and a piece of card is the difference.

7. Foam the ooze, and use a third of what looks right

   Once the paint is fully dry, run a bead of expanding foam out of the split and let it fall down the side of the can. Work in short bursts from the bottom up, so each run has something to sit on. Let it slump on its own rather than shaping it: the whole reason this reads as liquid is that gravity did the sculpting. Then leave it alone overnight.

   oops-proofing

   It expands two to three times after it leaves the can, and it does most of that in the first ten minutes while you are still standing there looking at it. Lay down about a third of what looks right and walk away. Everybody overshoots this once, and the result is a barrel wearing a beard.

8. Mist it, and wear the gloves

   This foam cures with moisture, not with air. A light mist of water over the run once it has stopped growing sets it firm overnight instead of leaving it gooey in the middle for days. In dry weather that matters more, not less.

   oops-proofing

   Cured foam does not come off skin. Not with soap, not with acetone, not with anything you have in the house. It wears off over about a week as the skin renews, and that is the only method there is. Gloves, and change them when they get tacky rather than pushing on with a glued hand.

9. Paint every square inch of the foam, or it will not survive the season

   Fluorescent green over the whole run, then a little flat black dry-brushed into the low spots so it has depth instead of reading as one flat colour. Get right into the undersides and into the places where the run meets the barrel.

   oops-proofing

   This is the step that decides whether the build lasts. Bare polyurethane foam is destroyed by sunlight: it goes yellow, then chalky, then it crumbles, and it starts within weeks. Paint is the only UV protection it gets, so a patch you could not reach is the patch that fails first. Test your paint on the offcut before you commit. Acrylic craft paint is always safe; some solvent-based sprays attack some foams, and finding that out on the finished ooze is finding it out too late. Fluorescent pigments also fade fast in direct sun. If the drums sit somewhere bright, expect to freshen the green once during a long season.

10. Set the skeleton in the foam while it is still tacky

    A hand and a forearm coming out over the rim, angled down the side of the can as though whatever it belongs to is going back in. Push it into the foam before that has fully set and it holds with no fixings at all. A skull half buried in the ooze further down is a good second piece.

    oops-proofing

    Resist using the whole skeleton. A complete skeleton next to a barrel reads as a skeleton standing next to a barrel, and the barrel stops being the story. One arm and no shoulder is worse, in the good way, because the question of what it is attached to never gets answered. Keep the rest in the box. The skull and the other arm are the start of next year's build.

11. Light it low and raking, from below the ooze

    Put the green puck lights at the base of the run rather than deep inside the can, aimed up the ooze. Painted foam is opaque, so it will not glow from behind: it has to be lit from the front and low down, which throws the texture into relief and puts a green cast on the grass underneath. Battery, so there is still no cord running out to the drums.

    oops-proofing

    Do not put a spotlight on it at head height. Lit flat from the front you can see it is a trash can. Lit low and raking you see a shape, a texture and a glow, and the eye fills in the rest. If there is a blacklight on the yard already, put it on this instead. Fluorescent green under UV is the strongest thing in this entire build and it costs nothing once the light is up.

12. Fog out of the split, if you want it — and it does change the build

    A small 400 watt fogger sits inside the top can with its nozzle pointed at the split, and the can becomes a chimney. Fog rolling out from under the ooze is the best thing this build does. Run it on a remote or a timer in short bursts rather than continuously. Warm fog rises and disappears at head height, which is not the look. If you want it to pour down the side and sit on the grass it has to be chilled first, which is what the Ground Fog Chiller build is for.

    oops-proofing

    Be honest with yourself that this ends the cordless part. Everything up to here runs on batteries and can sit anywhere in the yard; a fogger needs mains power, a GFCI outlet and an outdoor-rated cord run out to the drums. That is a real change to where they can go. Keep the nozzle clear of the plastic. Foggers get genuinely hot at the outlet and a trash can is thin polyethylene. And keep the machine itself dry. The can with the lid on is decent shelter, but a fogger sitting in the one barrel you drilled drain holes into is a fogger standing in a puddle.

13. Weight every upright can

    A paving slab, a bag of sand or a bucket of gravel in the bottom of each can that stands up. An empty plastic can weighs almost nothing and catches wind like a sail, and the oozing one has a foam sail on the side of it as well.

where it goes

Layouts this one lives in

Same build, any yard shape. Here is where it lands.

• → Toxic Waste on a Wide Shallow, No Porch Something leaked. Drums on their side with green light coming out of the split, tape across the walk, and whatever came out of them still moving. The one theme that scares people without a single ghost in it.
• → Toxic Waste on a Narrow Shallow with Porch Something leaked. Drums on their side with green light coming out of the split, tape across the walk, and whatever came out of them still moving. The one theme that scares people without a single ghost in it.
• → Toxic Waste on a L-Shaped with Projecting Garage Something leaked. Drums on their side with green light coming out of the split, tape across the walk, and whatever came out of them still moving. The one theme that scares people without a single ghost in it.
• → Toxic Waste on a Deep Narrow Something leaked. Drums on their side with green light coming out of the split, tape across the walk, and whatever came out of them still moving. The one theme that scares people without a single ghost in it.
• → Toxic Waste on a Corner Lot Something leaked. Drums on their side with green light coming out of the split, tape across the walk, and whatever came out of them still moving. The one theme that scares people without a single ghost in it.
• → Toxic Waste on a Split-Level or Raised Ranch Something leaked. Drums on their side with green light coming out of the split, tape across the walk, and whatever came out of them still moving. The one theme that scares people without a single ghost in it.
• → Toxic Waste on a Sloped or Terraced Something leaked. Drums on their side with green light coming out of the split, tape across the walk, and whatever came out of them still moving. The one theme that scares people without a single ghost in it.
• → Toxic Waste on a Small Urban Postage Stamp Something leaked. Drums on their side with green light coming out of the split, tape across the walk, and whatever came out of them still moving. The one theme that scares people without a single ghost in it.
• → Toxic Waste on a Circular Driveway Something leaked. Drums on their side with green light coming out of the split, tape across the walk, and whatever came out of them still moving. The one theme that scares people without a single ghost in it.
• → Toxic Waste on a Long Driveway, Rural Frontage Something leaked. Drums on their side with green light coming out of the split, tape across the walk, and whatever came out of them still moving. The one theme that scares people without a single ghost in it.