Dear Santa, I would really like a Tardis for Christmas

[a_blue_box_in_oz]

Greetings to all, a little background first:

In 2009 my then 4 year old son wrote a letter to Santa asking for a Tardis for Christmas.
He got a 11" commercially produced Tardis, the Tenth Doctor and Rose.

In 2010 he again wrote to Santa asking for a WORKING Tardis.
He got another 11" Tardis with lights and sound, opening doors, and the Cult of Skaro.

In 2011 again in his letter to Santa he asked for a REAL Tardis that could fly through space and time.
He got a Tardis that 'floats' between two magnetic plates and spins, the new Dalek paradigm, and a slew of villains.

He also got a note from Santa saying that he had to practice his maths as he was not yet good enough to work out the calculations needed to fly a Tardis and as such Santa could not give him something that he could use to accidently destroy the space time continuum.
He accepted this.

2012 with three weeks to Christmas he wrote to Santa and asked for a tardis cubby house.
** Three weeks to source, build (in total secrecy) and assemble a Tardis cubby house.  Only to place it in a garden frequented by the occasional snake and a high spider population!! not going to happen**

So that brings me to every father's dilemma, how not to disappoint a child at Christmas..

The answer came as I watched him walk off to bed that night, through the door that leads into the hallway that leads down to his bedroom.
A Serious lightbulb moment - THE DOOR!
[attachid]IMG_0344.JPG[/attach]

What, if instead of a cubby to play in, his room, his sisters room, and the bathroom were INSIDE the Tardis
If the Tardis had crash landed and was stuck in the wall....

So began Project Tardis, a high speed, covert, build of the front of a Tenth Doctor era Tardis front door facia.

[a_blue_box_in_oz]

The key to this working would be the dimensions of the actual door opening.  This will form the total work area for the double doors.
Ok, they will be taller and skinnier than real Tardis doors, but I really don't want to start removing brickwork.
Found a good pair of drawings on the net.
One was for an original series box, pretty much hand drawn and measured in inches
The other for a 1/8th scale model of the current series (Matt Smith) box.

If you are planning a door, or box, build, settle on one set of plans at the outset otherwise you may make my mistake of mixing the two Tardis styles halfway through the build simply because I was looking at the wrong plans just before cutting one of the main door uprights , i'll come back to that error later.

As the total door opening available was 790mm I decided to use all of that for just the doors and build the corner posts over and around the door frame.  This would give the facia a wider look.  (thinking outside the box  )

[Scarfwearer]

You sound like a Dad with a Plan...
If you look down the list you should find several TARDIS Doorways built into people's houses.
I'd definitely suggest keeping any mouldings or framing that you remove - in case you decide to move house...

Keep us posted - or at least take some pictures for later - it seems like you're going to be busy...

Crispin

[Volpone]

So you going to build it in secret and throw it up Christmas eve, while he sleeps?  If you pull that off, you're the best Dad ever!

[Rassilons Rod]

Can you imagine waking up and stepping out of the TARDIS?  As an adult, that would be the best night out ever... As a kid, yep, Santa did it

I really hope you pull this off in the time available!

[a_blue_box_in_oz]

A not so quick visit to our major hardware supplier revealed that they no longer carry the range of MDF that they did so the plan shifts to using DAR Radiata Pine.  A more expensive option than MDF but beggars (with no time to scrounge) can't be choosers.
Actually worked out ok as I had no way of getting sheets of MDF home and sliced up so the dressed pine was a winner as it could all fit in the car.  Sticking up out of the windows though.

December 8, The build commenced: posts first. 
These are based on the boxed 'L's that seem to be favoured by other builders, but expanded into a complete 'U'
One side of the U is longer than the other.

They are designed to slip into the rebated side of the door frame, extend out past the front of the architrave, cross across the architrave and return to the wall - encapsulating the existing door frame without the need to remove anything.
Posts are made up of 3 pieces, 100 x 12 x 2100, 150 x 12 x 2100, and 45 x 32 x 2100.
A fourth piece, 95 x 30 x 2100 is glued and screwed onto the 150 wide piece to create depth.
18mm 1/4 round is then added down both sides of the 95 x 30:


To get around the post 'just growing' out of the carpet, i used a piece of the 95 x 30 horizontally across the bottom of the post:

joints were glued and nailed and small reinforcing strips fitted inside. - being mindful of the space occupied by the existing architrave door frame.

[a_blue_box_in_oz]

December 9 2012: Start the doors.
Given that the doors are going to be in a high traffic area I went with full solid timber construction, pretty much to building standards in terms of strength, fixings etc, but knew they would be skinny, so no locks.

Nightmare moment! - a small voice behind me said "What are you building dad?"
With the posts sitting in full view on the saw horses I had nowhere to run...

"It's a sewing table for your mum , mate"

"WOW that's going to be a big sewing table!" was the reply, he then headed out of the garage and back to the house none the wiser.

Back to the doors:
Dressed pine in 70 x 30 x 2100 was cut up for the sides and cross members for the door frames.

I used a biscuit cutter to strengthen the joints and determined the size of the panel opening based on the available space in the door opening.
A little reworking of the actual dimensions till it worked out.  It would never be the right size for a proper Tardis, but....

With the door frames drying, and the kids off to see Nana, i had the chance to take one of the posts up to the house and get the exact location for the light box.
The light box will cover the top of the door frame in the same manner that the posts cover the upright section of the frame.
Cabling will pass through the cutouts in the uprights:

The cutouts in the uprights are covered by the light box so measurements here are crucial.

[a_blue_box_in_oz]

Dec 10 2012.
A conversation in the garage:
Master 7: "Mum, dad's building a sewing table for you and it's in here.  I could find it if you like?"
Mum: "No, I think dad want's it to be a surprise so we wont look for it"
Master 7 "Oh, Ok"

Good thing about having a cluttered garage, you can hide stuff by simply putting some cardboard or dust cloths over it 

[a_blue_box_in_oz]

Dec 11 - Dry fit and test fit.
With the kids off to school and a day off from the paying job I get the chance to do the dry fit up in the shed:
Door posts, door frames and basic light box plates.



A little fine tuning around the lightbox to post detail area was needed.
The roof would pose a small problem if I was to try and produce an actual three dimensional slope, so that was abandoned in favour of a two dimensional roof and crown light assembly:


The dry fit went well so the next step was to haul the whole thing up to the house and fit it to the doorway while I had the chance:

A quick placement followed by actually drilling the wooden doorframe at four points to take the posts:

It's a good thing that room has a 9' ceiling or it would never fit.

Doubler check on the light box fitment, mark the crownpiece for later cutting to drop it down into the gap between the posts and it's time to hang the doors:



Again, a little fine tuning as the original door frame is far from square and true...
Once the left door was hung, i clamped the right door to the left, with alignment pieces across both in order to determine where the right hand hinges should go. As the doors were not perfectly plumb, better to have the distortion out to the side where it could be hidden rather than the doors misaligning in the center where it would be really obvious.
Nice trick and it worked a treat.

haul it all back down to the shed and get to work on the in fill panels.
I had already decided not to have the telephone hatch opening due to it being in a door through which adults have to pass to get to the bathroom.
Infill panels were cut from 6mm plywood, for the good texture that it has.  10 x 10 pine beading, recessed 3mm was used around each opening to give the panels some added depth.  This is really time consuming, but the end product was worth the effort:

With the day running out, and the kids to be picked up, a very quick coat of primer was applied to the backs of the doors.
I have used a water based primer in plain white for the rear of the doors, no intention to do more there than a couple of coats and let time and kids do the rest in the way of wear marks, fingerprints, chips and scratches....

[Rassilons Rod]

Holy crap this must be one of the quickest builds we've seen yet!

And quality carpentry too!

[mordrogyn]

Yeah, all I can say is ditto to what Rassilonsrod just said.

[atomicgraph]

yea thats a quick build, lovin the way your posts came out, and makes the door set farther back.

[kiwidoc]

Very nice, looking great!   I love a door conversion!

[rasalon]

  yes, congrats to you on a job well done!

[a_blue_box_in_oz]

Thanks to all for the supportive comments - much appreciated.

Dec 12 - Dinner cooked, kids bathed and in bed its back to the shed:

Small side story - the paint.
  Quick trip through our major local hardware outlet saw the colour selected - great!

  "sorry, we're out of stock of the special formula base you need for that colour, you can have it in flat though, or we can get it here after
  Christmas"

  Had my heart set on a semi gloss, not too bright, not too flat, so off up the highway to the local branded paint distributor.
  "no problem" says the paint guy, "it's only available in gloss or flat"
  "Ok I'll just have to go gloss because I REALLY want this colour"
  "Oh and its only available in enamel in a gloss"
  "sigh - Ok"
  "Why so important asks paint guy. 
  Quick explanation follows.
"COOL" say paint guy, "I'll knock 20% off the price for you 'cos that's a great story"

Score!! - Every cloud etc etc.

Leave paint store, head for home.  Pass the local plastics manufacturer and supplier
Light bulb moment -Window material!
Closed - bother!
Big scrap bin out the front of premises:
A little bit of dumpster diving produced enough brand new, still wrapped, clear and opaque acrylic sheet offcuts to do the windows, sign box and several other bits if needed. Another score!
(undercoat and paint had come to $98.00 so a little dumpster diving stigma to help reduce costs was no problem)

So back to the build:
Decanted about half a cup of the white undercoat into a jar and set it aside. I would need a little white for later touch up on the door backs

Paint guy had given me a small bottle of black tint to mix with the undercoat to make it more productive to the topcoat, so I mixed that in to the remaining undercoat.  Good colour for an under coat:
Doors First:






Posts next:


Sign box:
(sorry I forgot to get photos of the sign box going from two flat sheets of MDF to a box, but it involved a lot of fiddly pieces from the off cut pile, a little bit of finger smashing and an equal amount of low level cursing)

Depth here was a minor problem as the sign box will sit almost against the very top of the door frame.

The roof/light crown piece you saw earlier as a flat two dimensional plate got the rest of its bits applied to make it out into 3D.
A polystyrene ball from the haberdashery shop was halved then quartered to be glued on the top to fill out the space between the horizontal and vertical plates.
A second layer applied to the main backing to create a shadow line to approximate the edge of the roof.
A third, and thicker layer applied to that to bring the face above the sign box out to suit the posts.
post tops were cobbled together out of scrap blocks and some 11mm quad and glued and screwed in place.
These post tops will be drilled through top to bottom to allow for the crown piece to be screwed to the tops of the posts