Hey all...

I actually started my TARDIS build way back in 2019, but I'm only just getting round to making a build diary... - because I'm still going!

So to recap events so far....

It was in the Summer of 2019 when I decided that now was the time to finally start a TARDIS build... I'd been mulling over the idea for some little while; I try to create some new folly every now and then to indulge my woodworking hobby, and it had been a couple of years since my last effort (a "henge")

I chose to do a 2005+ era TARDIS; I like the larger dimensions and I actually like the "as new" look as opposed to the battered, weathered, and dare I say 'tatty' appearence of some of the previous generations. No slight intended to those who's build is exactly that - this is just my personal preference.

I figured on making something which was absolutely recognisable as a TARDIS, but decided that I would not strive to make a 100% screen accurate replica of any particular model, and that I'd incorporate whichever elements I liked from the Tennant/Smith/Capaldi boxes.

Finally, I figured I'd try to make this a portable box, so designed it to be discreet pieces which could be fairly easily erected in-situ by 1 or 2 people in a few minutes, and I started off down that road.

During the course of summer & Autumn 2019 I made pretty good progress... I completed major construction of:
- the base/plinth
- the 4 corner posts
- 3 large walls
- 2 doors
- the roof stack
- part way on the sign boxes

Once it got to October, I had to pretty much stop - the box is too large to erect in my garage workshop so I was working primarily outside on the drive and on my deck, and by October it's getting pretty darn cold in Norway. I'm in Oslo, so fairly well south in the country as a whole, and I have it relatively easy compared to others further North, but even so, I will expect to see -15C temperatures and plenty of snow which lasts for a good few months. So everything was packed down & put away in the garage for winter.

It remains too cold to (comfortably) work outside until around April/May time, so it wasn't until April 2020 that I thought about getting started again, but life has a funny habit of throwing the odd curveballl every now and then, and so it was that as I started to prepare the workshop (my double garage), I noticed some pretty severe rot in the back of the structure, which upon inspection wasn't going to be a simple or cheap repair job, so SWMBO & I decided the best course was to demolish it & rebuild. And obviously that ended up taking way longer than we imagined it would, - COVID didn't help of course, but in the end it was damn near November before I got everything back up & running again. The construction of the building didn't take that long of course, but once the shell was handed back to me, I had to paint the outside of the building (twice), skin all the interior walls & ceiling, paint the interior, install the electrics, fit out shelving & so on, and then drag all the "stuff" that normally lives in the garage back out of storage, sort it, & get it back in...
Long story short, I completely lost the 2020 building season, so pretty much nothing of any note occurred on the TARDIS build for the whole of that year, and then of course I had to shut down again for winter.

Roll on 2021... it's April, so I'm trying to get started again - I've been outside working on the deck a few days already when the weather permits. There's no snow around by this point, but daytime temps are barely into double-digits, and night temps are still intermittently below zero. I've been outside this morning, but I've been driven back inside by a biting cold wind, hence, I'm sitting in my home office typing this diary instead. - I'll try to get back out again for a few more hours today if I can...

In the meantime, a few changes have occurred... - my original plan to make this a portable TARDIS is, I think, now scrapped... - because of limited space my box is going to have to live outdoors permanently, and I don't think that 'portable' and 'outdoor' is a circle that can be squared - there are too many compromises that have to be made to portability which would make keeping it 'outdoors-proof' nigh on impossible - not being able to caulk & seal all the joins between the various components etc. Plus, SWMBO also suggested a suitable place where she's happy for it to live on a permanent basis, and I'm happy with the location too, so now, it is going to be regarded as a permanent static garden feature, and I'm going to build it as such.

My base/plinth was the first part I started on, and immediately made a bit of a mistake.. I'd chosen a chunky size (I forget the exact dimensions, but it was a rectangular profile, not square) of exterior grade pressure treated timber to make the base - The idea was to run it through the table saw to take off the 45 bevel around the outside edge, and also to make a rebate for the floor panel to sit in. After I'd made lovely bevels on all my timbers, it ocurred to me that I'd run them through the saw in the wrong orientation and taken the wrong corner off such that the bevel was only in the right place when the beam was laying flat on it's longer side, with the consequence that the plinth was too shallow... I know there is much variation in TARDIS plinth heights over the years but this mistake left it lower than I wanted. It also meant there was less material available to take away to make a rebate for the floor panel, so I decided against doing that, and instead ended up building up the base with additional timbers to get back to the height I desired.
One fortunate side effect of the year-long enforced delay is that the pressure treated timbers have had plenty of time to dry out - you probably know that new PT wood is "soaking wet" and this really prevents it from taking paint well... to be sure, I did paint it toward the end of 2019, and a great deal of that original paint had flaked, bubbled & lifted. This last week I've been sanding that old paint back, and the timbers are much much dryer now, so I have now repainted, and fingers crossed that this will stick.

Here are some early shots that I took in 2019:



These first couple show the corner posts slotted into the base. The posts are made from 4 planks glued & screwed to form a hollow box. There are square formers inside to help maintain the square shape. I made these by joining 2 planks at a time at right-angles, using a 90-angle clamp to keep them square to each other as the glue dried, then I installed square formers at intervals along one of the "L"s before finally joining the 2 "L"s together to make a complete box. The top is filled in with one of the square formers, glued & screwed, so that it (should) be watertight. At the bottom, I made a smaller square which slips into the bottom of the post, with enough sticking out to slip into an identically sized hole framed up in the base. The posts are a reasonably tight fit such that they're self-supporting when slotted in, but not sufficient to keep them stiff & perfectly upright - there is a bit of sway with each post..





Here I started on the sides. The panels are 4mm plywood, nominally 1200mmx2400mm I sized my TARDIS such that I would not cut these panels for width, in order to maintain the nice factory cut edge. I cut the panels just below the bottom of the windows, the offcut piece being enough to use for panels on the roof stack later on.
I made a bit of a boo-boo with the width of the stiles; I sourced timber which I thought was the correct width, and would have been had I left them square... but I decided I would cut the 22.5 bevel on the stiles, and this makes them look way too narrow at the front... - but it was too late to change them out, so that is a mistake I will live with (probably). Because 4mm ply is pretty thin and flexible, I added rails on the inside as well, in the exact same place as the outside stiles sit. Thus I was able to secure the outside stiles with screws from the inside with no risk of screw points poking through. All the stiles in and out are glued with exterior grade wood glue, and I also ran an extra bead of the glue along the joins as well, so there is NO WAY water is going to get behind any of the stiles!



Here I'd started on the top sign boxes, but I think I'm not happy with these and will redo them. Also I have the roof stack in place. I went for the 3-tier roof stack, and it's made in 2 pieces; the lower 2 tiers are a single piece, since all angles are square & flat. The top tier has the pyramid dome shape in it going up to the lamp housing, so I made that as a separate piece. Again, it is all 4mm ply with some additional bracing inside. They're both fairly light individually (I can install each of them single-handed up a stepladder), but are reasonably sturdy.



Here I started on the windows. These are 4mm acrylic, cut just larger than the window openings & glued on from the inside. I plan to add some framing around the inside to keep them in there more sturdily, at least one of the panels appears to be coming away with nothing more then the glue holding it. The glazing bars are thin strips of timber I ripped on the tablesaw and painted white. They again are currently just glued on to the putside of the perspex, and again I don't think that's sturdy enough, so I plan to replicate them on the inside and then screw through from inside into the outer frames/glazing bars to form a solid timber-perspex-timber sandwich with both glue and screws holding it all fast.



I've cut out the hole for the PTO door. I plan to have a fully functional PTO door with a suitable vintage phone installed behind it - which I may try to install some functioning electronics in so that sounds play through the earpiece when the handset is picked up. ("are you my mummy?")

I've been accumulating old phones when I've come across them at fleamarkets etc. and this is the one I'm currently planning to use: it's designed for wall mounting:



I can open it all up - including the handset part, so I should be able to rig up a small board  - I have a spare Raspberry Pi somewhere - with a switch input from the hookflash, and either try to use the original speaker or install a modern small speaker in the earpiece. I'll let you know how that works out... I also have a small soundboard from Addafruit that I could use here (I was planning that for the main TARDIS sound effects).

For the top signs I'm in doubt... I definitely want them to be illuminated and I've bought some LED strips for just that. The doubt is the method of construction of the signs themselves. They're definitely going to be sealed in behind a sheet of perspex, so they will be weatherproof from the outside. I have done some promising experiments with just printing the signs on my inkjet printer, on heavy-gauge glossy photo paper, then - as I only have an A4 printer, joining several pieces to make a single long sign... Here's some examples of my experiments:





The 'issues' with this method...
the joins between the paper parts is slightly visible... I think i've mitigated that by running a black sharpie over the edge of the paper before joining.
2nd: the opacity of the printed sign wasn't giving a good backlight result - there was too much light bleed through the black parts. I struggled with this for a while, before determining that doubling up 2 prints does the job quite nicely, so this 'may' be the method I end up going with. It just takes a steady eye and steady hand to get them perfectly aligned, but I'll make up a light box so I can see the result as I adjust the alignment.

That's enough from me for now... I'm looking out the window and itching to get back out and make some progress...

Cheers!

Paul G.

I love your build, especially the antique phone & nicely stacked roof.

FYI:  When you download a picture, you then need to actually insert it, this will prevent then looking like a greyed out "gohst" image.

Best regards,


Russell

Thanks Russel.

I *thought* I understood the correct way to insert pictures! - I did upload quite a few more than I actually decided to use... The ones I did want to use I did "insert" and I believe these appear correctly (not ghost-y)

The ghost-y ones I did not "insert" as I figured they were redundant, too similar to others etc... - I didn't intend for them to appear at all...

I had not realised that this meant they would be shown, but as a ghost-y image... I thought they just wouldn't appear at all, rather than being tacked on at the end...

Oh well... Live and learn!

Paul G.

The location that we've agreed upon for this box to finally rest is on my deck at the back of the house, right next to the newly built garage. I had to cut out a section of built-in bench/storage cases, and build a new section of deck where it had just been soil. I've had to dig out a couple of cubic metres of soil - and it was still frozen ground whilst I was digging, so it was a hard slog. Following that I've poured in some 120kg of concrete and some rebar to anchor the slab to the ground, and then laid new joists and deck planks to extend the existing deck into the area. I've no doubt that the deck area is sufficiently reinforced to take the weight of a fully laden TARDIS. Being that it will sit on decking with 8mm gaps between planks, there is complete drainage underneath the TARDIS and no possibility of it ever sitting in a puddle. Any water that runs down the outside will drain away Immediately.

Also, as it's so close to the house and garage, I will be able to supply permanent mains electricity into the box, so I absolutely will do that, and that gives me many extra possibilities for SFX. I have an old small form factor PC, many spare monitors, and a monitor mounting arm such that I could make something very much like the doctors display monitor that was seen in many episodes.. one that comes to mind is the one where it displays Clara Oswald's body scan and keeps cycling between pregnant/not pregnant... I actually have that very scan effect as a screensaver...

And being where it is, it will be visible from the dining table through the dining room window..  so I'll be able to admire it every day at dinner.

Happy days!

P.

I managed to edit the top post to remove those uninserted images... they didn't really add anything to the narrative. To replace them Ive got some new images of the area where the box is going to stand, now that i've finished preparing it.

It's going to live on the corner of my deck, just next to the side of the new garage (the white building in the right of the picture, with the stairs up to the roof terrace). Those nasty trees are the boundary between my property and my neighbour. coming in from the bottom left corner you can see a long run of built-in 'bench-boxes' that I built years ago primarily to hide away the mess that always accumulates round the base of these trees, but they also have lift up lids to I store burning wood & other scraps in them, and as a bonus, SWMBO made a load of long cushions to go on top so they make perfect bench seats as well. Originally this used to extend into the zone where the TARDIS is going to stand, so I had to chainsaw about a metre or so off of the end. That left a hole in the ground - the deck doesn't extend fully under the bench, so I had to make a concrete slab strong enough to support laying a new section of deck that's strong enough to support a TARDIS... you can see in the picture 26 that the stain is a darker colour where I laid new deck planks (I can't get the right deck stain during lockdown). The top of the TARDIS will be very visible when climbing the stairs up to the roof terrace, so I am going to need to take care to make that normally quite hidden area look good too...




Here's a closeup of the newly patched in section of deck.. you can see that I had to dig back the bank of soil a bit, and what you can't see is that I had to dig down quite a bit too. After digging down deep enough, I lined the bottom of the pit with some serious heavy concrete paving slabs to serve as padstones, I rammed in a half-dozen lengths of rebar into the ground with the tops sticking up to where the finished level of the concrete would be, put some shuttering in place to stop my mix running away under the old original deck, and poured in some 120KG of frostproof concrete. that made a slab under the whole area about 15cm thick. On top of this I laid 48x98mm pressure treated timber, which I additionally painted with deck stain (twice), paying especial attention to the end grains (the stain is also a preservative).  On top of that I laid pressure treated deck planks with 8mm gaps between. Rain will not pool here...

Errr.. problem.. I can't insert this image.. it says it failed security checks??? - if admins could look into this I'll try to insert the image in post-production...

Cheers

Paul G.

How many pics were you trying to insert?  My mod-ly powers are limited (and skill at using them is even less), so looking at your post, everything looks fine and 2 images are successfully uploaded. 

I'd have said that via PM, except that I actually have something relevant to the thread too.  I try not to provide unsolicited advice, but it looks like you're on the right track so I'll comment on that.  Not only is drainage important, so is ventilation.  I'm assuming you'll put in a floor at some point.  By putting your TARDIS on a deck if you put some vent holes in the floor you should get great bottom ventilation.  And I'm noticing a gap under the POLICE BOX signs.  If you leave that (or at least a bit of it) you'll have good ventilation from the top so you should get some really good air ventilation. 

I added vents under my POLICE BOX signs as I increased ventilation on my TARDIS.  The Plan had been to make it completely watertight so I didn't have any ventilation at all.  I also had fake windows to increase water resistance (painted the wood silver/grey and then put the frosted window treatments over that).  The Reality is that Nature, um, finds a way.  Not only could water get in through the joins in the wood, it would actually get in through any screws that went all the way through.  On top of that something like this gets condensation in any climate with humidity and temperature fluctuations; water condenses inside.  Only without vents it has no place to go.  Add in the darkness from lack of windows and I had a nice mold colony pretty quickly. 

But I'm rambling.  Nice looking box.  You've clearly put a lot of thought and skill into it.  And if you haven't considered it, ventilation is about as important as drainage. 

Thanks Volpone. It was actually only 1 more photo in addition to the 2 that succeeded, it was just a close-up view of the new section of deck, showing, just as you suggest, that there is a goodly amount of space under the deck, and plenty of gaps between the planks, so I'm expecting to get very good ventilation up through the bottom. You can see in the earlier pics my base is a lattice of timber braces with plenty of open space. I am (actually just have today) fitted a floor panel, I've taken some pics from today's efforts, but they're still waiting to be uploaded from my phone... the floor panel is a tightly fitted square of ply, which I have also covered on top with a kind of TARDIS appropriate vinyl flooring (it has little roundels on it) that, as it currently stands would completely block any airflow up through the bottom, so I definitely will be putting in one or two vent panels.

I have been wondering about the "other end" of the airflow... it wasn't my intention to leave that gap under the sign boxes, I just haven't got round to finalising the construction of that part yet... I'm almost certainly not going to use the ones that are shown in the earlier pictures, and I've made a start on making new ones, but they're still a work in progress.

I started off by reading through all 20-odd pages of your build diary last week! So I'm quite familiar with all the tribulations you've had fighting against nature. We do get some quite severe weather here in Norway - in fact, it bloody snowed for a bit earlier this evening! Fortunately just a brief flurry, stopped after about 20 mins, and no evidence left of it now. We are forecast for below freezing night temperatures for several days to come.

We build a lot in wood here... my (60 year old) house is wooden, my new garage is wooden, my (5 year old) shed is wood. The only rot I've yet experienced was in the old garage block that was demolished in 2020... as best we could determine, that had been standing for about 30 years, and was built appallingly badly! Structural timbers were sitting directly on the ground (clay-heavy soil, very wet, very poor drainage), then it seems that the concrete floor was poured inside the building after the walls were erected, so the walls didn't sit ON the slab, they merely contained it. At the back the sole plate was complete mush, as were the bottom half-metre of several of the support posts and the bottom 3-4 rows of the siding planks.

I've used pressure treated timber for the plinth, which has had a year to dry out. I've painted *every part of it* - the bottom is painted with the same deck paint as the deck (it's a preservative as well as a stain). ALL wood-to-wood joins are made with external grade wood glue as well as either screws or pin nails. I also decided that I am going to add an additional thin strip of treated wood under the plinth, I often collect those strips that they use in the timber yard to separate layers of palletised wood.. they're maybe 1m long, 8mm thick, 6cm wide, tough as old boots, and best of all totally free  I usually gather up a few each time I go to the timber yard. I made a trellis for around my BBQ 'hut' out of these about 4 years ago, with nothing more than the same deck paint to protect them, and these are still as good now as the day I erected them.

Another preventive measure I started on last year was a heavy tarp "condom" which I will put over it in winter. I bought several of the heaviest grade tarps I could find in the shops here... and handily this tarp is pretty close to being TARDIS blue. I started cutting & joining sections of this tarp to make a cloak that will slip over the box from the top, has a hole in the very top for the lantern housing to poke up through, it's open at the front to allow access through the doors (and makes getting it on & off easier). Then I have a second section which works like a "hat"... it goes on after the cloak, has a section shaped around the lantern, and then covers the entire roof stack, finishing somewhere around the sign boxes. I didn't quite get it finished last year, so the TARDIS got moved inside for winter, but from here on out it's going to be a 100% outside box, so this year I'll definitely be returning to that project before winter comes around again. I'll be sure to post some pictures of it when I get it done... my hope is that I can make a tight fitting condom on which I can paint a few TARDIS features (white window bars, top sign text etc.) so that even when it's completely covered up it still *looks like* a TARDIS.   

Cheers!

Paul G

Actually, now I think on... the back of the box is right up against those trees... it will never be seen from that aspect, so I absolutely could leave that gap under the sign box there and it will never be noticeable.

I think I may have to think about how my winter condom will affect ventilation though... I'll mull that one over, I'm sure it can't be too hard to contrive a solution...

Thanks again.

P.

Well you certainly seem to know what you're doing (one can never take that for granted) and have thought things through on a level that is head and shoulders above what I've managed.  I don't know about Norwegian winters, but I know about Wisconsin winters.  I wouldn't bee too worried about ventilation in the winter in Wisconsin, (but then again, if you've read my build thread, you know I've been pretty much 100% wrong about 98% of the things I've done.  So at this point I'll just watch and learn.  

OK, so recent progress...

Having spent a fair bit of time filling, sanding, & painting the base, Ive been preparing the floor panel to fit in the recess. This is a single piece of ply (the cheap variety). I've painted it twice on both sides, and 4 times on the edges with preservative deck stain:



I've long been hanging on to an offcut of vinyl flooring left over from another job years ago, that I thought would be ideal for this:



I couldn't cover the whole panel with a single piece, so I've had to make a join as best I can. this has been stuck to the top of the panel with contact adhesive. I think it looks not too bad..



Obviously this covering will completely block airflow coming up through the bottom, so I'm going to be fitting one or two vent grilles later on. (and ignore the grime on the vinyl, I haven't cleaned it yet).

That's the base more-or less done, although I am going to raise it off the deck a tiny bit, because it ocurred to me that when (not if!) I want to repaint the base in-situ, it would be very helpful to have it raised a bit so I don't need to mask off the deck planks - I'll just be able to slide some newspaper under the lip when I paint. To do that, I'm going to use some of these strips:



These are bits I pick up for free at the timber merchants - they're used to separate layers of palletised wood to allow airflow between them. These ones I made into this little bit of trellis several years ago, and ever since they've been in SWMBO's veggie plot to train pea plants. the bottoms were even sitting below the soil surface, and they've had no additional treatment (by me), and there's not a hint of any rot. (must be made of the same stuff they make pallets from!)

I'm going to break this down and just loosely tack a row of them on the bottom of the base, near the inner edge, such that there will be a noticable 8mm gap all around the visible edge of the base. And just because I can (not because I think I need to), I'm going to give these all a going over with preservative stain too... although these I regard as entirely sacrificial.

With the work on the base more or less done (notwithstanding I will lift it out & raise it slightly), the next major part I want to complete is the back wall panel. Once in place, I will find it nigh on impossible to access the outside, so I need to make as sure as sure can be that I do the best possible job with the weatherproofing as I can.

Due to the original plan to make this a collapsable box, all the component parts were designed for lightness. If I were starting over knowing it was to be a permanent outside box, I wouldn't have built in this manner - I'd have used much "chunkier" materials. However, an upside of the modular design is that I also intended each & every piece to be individually waterproofed, and therefore all my wall panels are sealed & painted on ALL of their edges. Because of the difficulty getting behind the box after assembly though, I'm going over the back panel with a fine tooth comb, looking for and sealing any place where I suspect water could intrude. I've got the panel up on stands, and I'm starting on the inside, for no other reason than I noticed the acrylic window panel was hanging on by only a small bead of glue, and most of the glue joins had failed, so I needed to keep it this way up until that was addressed.



The acrylic is a single pane that cover the entire width of the panel, forming both windows in one piece. I drilled & countersunk 6 screw holes (2 left, 2 middle, 2 right) from the inside, through the acrylic and into the timber rails & stiles. This was enough to secure the pane in place, but still allowed too much flex in the centre of each window, so I added an extra screw there as well, so it's really nice & rigid now. Whilst there, I noticed that the glazing bars weren't holding up well with just glue either, and any of them would have come away with the gentlest of taps, so using some really small screws, I've repeated this process to hold all of the individual glazing bar pieces in place with screws too:



Once that was done, I added a new bead of caulk around the edge of the pane, and gave the entire side a fresh coat of white paint, making sure to get paint into every nook & cranny.

Once that was dry, I flipped it over to work on the exterior surface:



A good portion didn't need too much attention, but I wanted to double-down in the area around the window, so I broke out my favourate frame sealant:



This good for temperatures from -40C to +90C, it isn't sandable (it's meant to remain flexible, which I think is good for this application), but it is paintable.

I've gone around every joint in the windows, - all 12 inner squares, and around the outer frame where white meets blue. I also filled in a couple of other joins which looked like it could take it.



I now have to wait a couple of hours for the sealant to skin over before I can continue painting, but as soon its ready, I'm going to go over all the glazing bars with a fresh coat of white paint (with a small modelling brush), and recoat all the blue. Hopefully in the time I've been sat inside typing this, it's ready to proceed... let's go see!

P.

Did manage a little bit more yesterday whilst waiting for the caulk to set..

I flipped the base up on its edge and added the strips to the bottom. I left gaps between some of the strips for additional airflow, and to leave the ends of the strips exposed. I initially added a row round the perimeter of the base and forgot about the middle... I figured if left like that there's a likelihood it would sag inwards a bit, so I hurredly added some strips under the central brace beams as well, and I couldn't be arsed to paint them & wait for them to dry...



I think with this small gap now apparent beneath the base it will be easier to paint, or perhaps one day I may need to get a prybar under there to lift the entire TARDIS if I ever need to move it a bit...




I'm definitely going to be giving the entire TARDIS a 'beauty coat' of new paint after it's all assembled & caulked in all the joins, so I'll take care of those wee blemishes I made when I flipped it up on its edge...

This is how I left it at the end of the day...



Sun is shining this morning, but rain is forecast later in the day, so I'd best get my arse into gear & go make this rainproof in the next few hours (tarp to the rescue!)

P.

In the times when I'm not able to be outside building, I'm reading through others' build diaries, and I see a lot of references to water ingress into the tardis (puddles on the floor and elsewhare) which got me to thinking that the bad thing is water getting in and having nowhere to go, so did anyone ever consider putting a drain or two in their TARDIS floors? - I'm thinking this kind of thing:



I had to have a join in the vinyl flooring I installed in mine, and the join isn't fabulous if I'm honest, so I was even thinking of hiding the join by installing a drain like this:



Just fitted into the TARDIS floor it would provide a permanent inlet for air circulation, and also allow puddles to drain away, or provide you somewhere to sweep the water to if you're manually dealing with puddles. Neither of these are particularly expensive from your local tile supplier...

Pretty much any thickness of floor panel should be able to accommodate one of these.

Anyone done this?

Hi there.

I used a drain similar to that in mine:

Close up:


Here it is in place:


My base is hollow underneath & propped up on some broken concrete slabs so the air can circulate under.

Seems to have worked OK for me...

Hope that helps.

Russell

Great minds think alike! (Or is it 'fools seldom differ')