Neither had I. That's very inspiring.

Quote from: greatwazoo42 on Oct 17, 2011, 12:29 am
I actually hadn't seen these before.  I love how it is secretly an entrance to another room in the house which is done up as a Console Room.

It's really a trick of the camera, making it look like that Police Box is the entrance to another room. We've all seen Crispin's other work - consoles, Daleks, etc. - and know how talented he is.

So by now it should come as no surprise to any of us that he's managed to get that whole console room to actually fit inside the box!

Now that's brilliant.

Dino.

Crispin,
  I was just 'traveling' around the website as I've not explored all it's features and functions yet. This was first time I came upon the pictures of your build. Kudos! This is the first time I saw what I myself have had in mind for the last 3 decades! I always felt that the best use of a Tardis build would be to open up into a larger room behind the doors, thus giving the FULL Tardis experience. A couple of times I was very close to doing same only to have my plans stalled by required moving and consequent selling of my homes. I still hope to fulfill that original vision someday, but if I cannot it is wonderful to see that someone else HAS. I always wondered how it would look outside my imagination if the build were done in such a way, and now I know. It really is all I'd ever imagined it could be. What a great experience it must be walking through those Tardis doors and 'into' that other room/world/full scale control room!! I'm so glad to finally see a picture of the type build/project that has always been inside my head! Inspiring 

Must be a question of timing. I built it, enjoyed it for a while, moved house, brought it with me, settled in, reassembled it, enjoyed it for a bit, moved house again...
Now it's sitting in bits again in the workshop waiting for the time and space...
It'll rise again in time, probably looking slightly different as it did last time.

House moves are the bane of builders of large props - I know I'm not the only one who's encountered that.

Crispin

yep moving is a pain!!!! hope everything goes well during the reconstruction

Hey Im new here but this has got to be the best tardis complete with console room  build ive ever seen short of the actual new BBC tardis interior!!! I am sooooooo Jealous of you scarf wearer lol.....Ive got a full size tardis in my living room but id kill to have your console room too hahahahaha.  great job well done.

Well thank you, but there are many, many better police boxes and console builds than mine here on the forum - take a look around.
For a while there I had the space to put up the wall panels, but for the moment it's all stacked on the floor of my shed, as I've moved house.

Crispin

You're being too modest there Crispin - both your consoles are 'up there' with the best  ! I've always admired your console room and wish I had the space, ambition and time (and money  ) to build one myself!
T

The thing(s) I like about your build(s) (the parentheses are to avoid Pythonesque Spanish Inquisition embarrassment) is/are: 

That your TARDIS predates the gobs of great research here.  Nowdays, slapping together a screen-accurate box is relatively straightforward.  When you did your initial build that wasn't the case. 

And both your control rooms are pretty darned cool. 

There, I guess that wasn't so hard. 

So after we moved house again in 2011, I reassembled my Tardis in the conservatory, because it has a nice high ceiling. Unfortunately we don't get out there very often, so it didn't get seen a lot. The rest of the props lay scattered around the shed and the garage. Reassembly of the console room was well over the horizon, there being so much else to do.

The kitchen had a gap where a huge old stove had been taken out, and about 2 years ago Mrs S. said that a larder/pantry would be nice there. It could be 4 foot square. She said: "you could paint it blue...".
An idea was born.
The gap was just over 48 inches.
Well maybe if I took off the skirting board, and trimmed the base of my Tardis a bit... nope. No way. I'd have to hack up the sign box as well, which is integral to the wall.

But the kitchen cabinets are quite old, and while they were nice, they don't all close properly now, and some of the knobs are loose or missing, and she doesn't like the countertop. So sooner or later they're going to change. Probably not that soon... The unit next to the gap was 600mm, above and below. And after a brief appointment with my table saw it's now 500mm. I also chopped 100mm out of the middle of the door, glued the remainder together and backed it with reinforcements, then swapped the hacked up door with a less conspicuous one in the corner of the kitchen. I did the same with the one above.
I also shortened the little tray under the hanging cabinet. I then chopped the very end of the counter off, chopped off a further 100mm of the counter and screwed the chopped off end back on (a trick I learned from making second-hand house doors narrower to fit a smaller frame). The joins are virtually invisible.

And here's the result:



The roof was a challenge:
As you can see, there's no room for the roof or the lamp.
I really didn't want to destroy the taller roof that I built when I did the big make-over (now about ten years ago). At that time I had changed a lot of things about the box, including texturing and repainting it.
But I kept the old roof ("Never throw anything away, Harry..."), and also had the foresight to texture and paint it to match the make-over, as I knew I would be unlikely to match it later if I ever wanted the shorter roof back (and if I didn't, why keep it?).
Unfortunately, I kept the old roof in a damp shed for a couple of years and then dropped it whilst moving stuff around, and being just glued together it fell apart. That was years ago, but I still kept the parts.
So now I find there's room for the steps, but not the sloped part or lamp. So I put the old steps back together, and the tall roof went into storage...

I also had to reverse the doors so they open outwards, and I added magnetic catches at the top to hold them shut. The phone cubby lifts out, so that's now storage for the lamp.



I made six U-shaped shelves out of 3/4 inch plywood (I arranged them so I managed to get four of them out of one sheet of ply). I made a plywood liner for the TARDIS so I didn't have to mess up the interior too much.

Mrs. S is delighted.



Just for fun, I lined the liner with acrylic sheet mirror. You can cut and drill this stuff pretty easily if you're careful and I'm used to cutting acrylic windows. I glued the mirrors on, but in spite of the rigid liner the acrylic is still too thin to stay perfectly flat, so when you stand inside without the shelves, you get a nice infinity effect, but it's a little bit fun-house. You can get thicker stuff, which is more expensive, but not too much is visible at once when the shelves are stacked, so it's okay.
You definitely get a good impression that it's bigger on the inside.


So Mrs. S was happy, I was happy. We see the Tardis every day. I can reach out and touch it whenever I stand there to make tea. It gets nice comments from visitors - often in Welsh...
But that was two years ago. Now the reassembly of the console room is looking more imminent, but there's just one problem: my Tardis now has an essential job to do in the kitchen.
I see only two options: either take it back, or build another one...

EDIT: I forgot to mention that I wired the Tardis internal light (which is now an LED unit) and the sign box lights, which are still American fluorescent tubes running on a step-down transformer) to the kitchen under cabinet lighting (which I also changed out for LEDs), so they're on whenever we're working in the kitchen. In practice they get left on a lot.

Crispin

Quote from: Scarfwearer on Nov 18, 2016, 05:23 pm

I see only two options: either take it back, or build another one...

Crispin

Hmm... looks to me like you can't take back the Tardis now it's being so useful - you'll just have to build another, that way you and the wife can have one each and everyone's happy!

Nice job on the conversion BTW - the mirrors are a neat idea, and it's not the first time the Tardis has had to materialise without the lamp. 

I like the way you think! 

Crispin

Now all you need is Troughton, Pertwee, an early Tom Baker, or even a post-War Machines Hartnell to step out of it.  (And the black with white writing sign is accurate for that iteration of the prop.)

Whoa! Talk about the ultimate Doomsday Prepper! When you've got a TARDIS packed that full with food stores, you're not just prepping for the end of the world, or a Zombie Apocralypse (sic), you're prepping for the end of life, the universe, and everything! (Hope you've got plenty of Jammie Dodgers and Jelly Babies in there! )

Dino.

One effect of the mirrors is that there seems to be more food on the inside...

We do actually live pretty far out of town now, so we try not to shop as often, to be a bit more ecological.
Another reason is that we get snowed in sometimes, so it's good to have supplies on hand. We're also on a private water supply. They have a saying out here that we're closer to heaven than hospital.

But probably the main reason is that we just don't like shopping.

Crispin