Knockturn Alley... Progress Report

Last year's Horcrux Hunt escape room party was really just the result of our friends hinting that they wanted to see the props I made for Little Tomato's birthday party. However, as Husband and I love Halloween, and we are both giant puzzle nerds, we had a LOT of fun designing an escape room party.

With all of these props in storage, it really made sense to keep 'rolling with it' and expanding our props for an annual Halloween escape room party.

This year's big expansion is to convert our office into Knockturn Alley. Husband really wanted a presence of Knockturn Alley in our party. He loves the 'spooky' feel of it, and thinks it is only fitting for a Halloween party. I can't argue with that logic. 😋

Last year, we had a cabinet in our Diagon Alley setup that had a few 'Dark Arts' items, but he was really disappointed that it wasn't 'more of a thing.' So this year, true to form, we 'went big.' Some of the initial work is in THIS post, and while we aren't nearly at the finish line, I thought we had enough progress to add a few more sneak peek pictures.

After last year's party, we added built-in bookshelves into the office. Little Tomato and I are avid readers and we really needed the shelf space. I was NOT looking forward to taking down and storing an entire wall of books for a party. 

In order to avoid this mess, we made our Knockturn Alley the actual alley. Rather than making the inside of a shop, we made storefronts. This meant that we only needed to clear books off a few shelves and didn't have to use a lot of props to fill the room. 

We have two walls of bookshelves and a wall with windows to work with. The two bookshelf walls will have storefronts, and the window wall will have a solid brick facade to block light coming in from the window.

We put the first wall up last weekend to 'work out the kinks;' to make sure it would stand up properly, that the size worked, and that the window aligned where it was supposed to align with the shelf heights. We needed to do a bit of trimming of the foam to fit, and we will need to add some touchup paint, but it is looking good so far. We're figuring out the lighting now (LED candles, lamp, etc. to illuminate 'not too much'). This storefront has a plexiglass window, so the party guests will not be able to access anything in this window.

The brick wall was finished a few weeks ago. We will add stabilizing bracket 'feet' once we place it in the room, and add posters, signs, accessories, etc... but the wall itself is ready to go.

Work on the final wall is underway.  Primed foam is drying below...

This wall has cabinets below the bookshelves to hide the printer and board games, etc. behind doors. Husband and my brother built a window frame to sit on the cabinet and I am working on the wall that surrounds the window. This window is open, so the objects in this display are accessible and within reach. 

That is the progress on the Knockturn Alley thus far.

In between stages of this project, I've been working on new signs to post above the entry into both Knockturn and Diagon Alleys, and the 'finger point' sign into Knockturn Alley that will be mounted on the brick wall. 

It has been quite busy at House of Little Tomato!