Child Sized Tardis

[crt404]

Okay, so I'm not the largest Doctor Who fan (I would never build a TARDIS for a shed), but my colleague at work is.  So, following a discussion in the office about building a TARDIS as a garden shed, I decided before taking on the full size project, to make my children a small (1.5m in height) verison for them to play in in the garden.

Thankfully my little girl is a large Doctor Who fan, but unfortuantely for my lad, she normally gets the role of the Doctor and he gets that of Amy!

So here we go, the Easter weekend project...

[lswl]

Nice work there! He gets Amy and she gets Doctor, why not introduce them to a Doctor/Romana episode, they're both timelords. Then they'll want a sonic screwdriver, one of the Doctor"s, one of Romana's then they'll..... Might be a bad idea

[Scarfwearer]

Looks like a great start! Kids these days don't know how lucky they are...

Crispin

[rasilon1]

You have an excellent start, I remember when I was a kid, life was so wonderfully, magical, then they sent me away tort me to be sensible logical.......... anyhow and by that I mean It's good to be a child, keep the strong work going.

[chinandler]

Looking good so far! They'll love it!
I made a couple of these for my kids. A 10th & 11th Doctors Tardis, (check 'em out). Action_mat also has a good child size tardis on here too, and Wayne Venomous.
Cant wait to see this finished! Carry on

[wayne venomous]

Looking good!
Make sure you closely observe the reaction when you present this to your kids, it will stay with you forever! 

[crt404]

Okay, so I have a very sunburnt neck, it would appear factor 25 is not enough, I might have to 'up it' for the next lot of hot weather!

Anyway, whoever said that tardis building isnt cheap was right.  I think so far it's up to about £100, but I realise this is no where near what a full size one costs, so I'm not going to moan about it too much.

Anyway, onto the update...

I made the base out of some CLS as it was going cheap at B&Q.  I had looked at going to a local timber yard, but because they wanted £30 to deliver the timber, B&Q actually worked out cheaper.  Also in hindsight, I think I am going to add some extra strength under the base, as if you squeze an adult in to the box, the floor does give slightly - either that or I shouldnt be so cheap, and I should buy some thicker ply wood.  Its roughly 90cm*90cm.

Next came the filling of the holes in the doors.  If I'd been a bit more carefull with the initial cutting of the wood, I think I would have had an easier job here, but me being me there were lots of holes to fill.

Next I made up some L shaped pillars.  These are actually made up of several pieces of wood sandwiched together.  Again, this was because of the strange pricing of B&Q wood.  A strip of 70mm*18mm was about £5, or a strip of 35mm*18mm was only £1.20 odd; so out came the glue and clamps!  Due to the fact the box will only be a child scale model (it's still almost 1.8m high!), once the 18mm wood thickness is taken into account, there didnt seem a need to increase the L shape pillar into a box section.

Thought I better just take an image of the base once fully clad.  Not much else to say, aside from the fact I used the slightly 'bluey' side to the wood, in light of the final colour it shall be stained.

Here it is... the money shot... it finally felt like I was getting somewhere!  All this effort and it's starting to look like a tardis! My neck hurts, my back hurts, I need a drink, but its finally paying off!

Added some beading to the top of the doors.  These strips of wood are actually off cuts from the L shaped pillars that I cut off when joining the two bits of wood together.

Forming the box sections that will house the police box signs.  Again using offcuts from the pillar process.  (a small warning here, a lot of the rest of my project is using offcuts!)

So I've broken out the new stash of wood (some 35*18 for those who care), glued to make 70mm, and cut into a roof like shape!  I'm finding this bit slightly easier, mainly as I haven't actually planned this bit, and I can improvise.  Thank god for the reference that is google images.  oh, and just for the record, I'm going for a Matt Smith tardis - the shape's a bit easier and I prefer the colour.

Okay, so I couldn't wait and I had to put the roof on.  I just wanted a sneeky peek!

Having got over the fact that this is finally coming together, I took off the roof, and again using offcuts, started to infill the void to create a support structure for the ply roof.

I'm enjoying this 'puttin together' a bit too much.  Here we go again!

Clad with some ply wood.

And finally, as I'm not going to get to work on it much this week, the final shot for a week or so....


Now the only things left to consider are the ancillaries: windows, lantern, signage and stain (probably the iris).  Anyway, I'm off to Ebay to see if I can find a cheap yale lock!

Thanks for all the comments. Charlie

and I forgot to mention, although she'll never read this, A HUGE THANK YOU TO MY WIFE FOR PUTTING UP WITH ME, SAWDUST AND ALL MY CRAZY IDEAS.  Kathy, you are a star!

[rocket]

Very nice indeed, I wish my dad had built one when I was a kid.

[DoctorWho8]

Looking good in a quick time!
Bill "the Doctor" Rudloff

[rasilon1]

Excellent progress, you will need a scaled down Dalek or K9 to go with the Tardis.

[celation]

Damn that's cool!

And when your son's not playing with the TARDIS, you can play at "Logopolis"!

(Has someone already done that joke...?)

[rasilon1]

No! I think your the First. I just dont know what Logopolis is  

[Rassilons Rod]

Logopolis was the 4th Doctor's swansong

[rasilon1]

Oh I've seen that episode, but at my age I don't remember so well, oh hang on, Yeah now I have it, he went there to get computations dun on the Tardis to fix the camellion circut, or am I getting one memory mix up with another 

[Rassilons Rod]

Thats the one