Tardis (Office) Door Frame (2018 Halloween)

[hschade]

I have been toying w/ the idea of building a Tardis for the last couple years, practicality such as where would I put it and what would I do with it have been some of the bigger deterrents. I would do some basic searching and most times would stumble across this web site/forum.  So when I finally found a reason to build a Tardis, that my practical side could agree with, I knew I had to try and document the process and share it.
Here is my experience: (The OneDrive doc I did while building: https://1drv.ms/w/s!Au_GGFJhKE3wg7ZgjcJx4iIZNUpjYA)



My 2018 Halloween Tardis Door Frame Build

Been wanting to build a Tardis for a few years now.  The 2018 office decorating contest finally pushed me over the edge to doing it, at least a door frame cover of one.  So some additional research and here I am writing up my experience.

My research found the Tardis Builders web site, and many many others.  I knew I wanted to base my design off of the 10th Dr, my personal favorite, and Tardis Builders had some pretty good plans available.  With a copy of the plans Bill Rudloff (https://www.dropbox.com/s/bkbkaameov9rwh7/2005TARDISPlans.pdf) has done, and a picture on Deviant Art (https://www.deviantart.com/maydayparker/art/TARDIS-Measurements-161532951) that had some pretty good measurements I started roughing out my own set of plans to fit the office doorway.

Some quick sketching, and some rough measurements based on the height and width of the doorway and its framing. When I got home, and had more time to look over the plans and do a little more calculating, I wrote up the parts list I was going to start with, and realized I would be able to build a Tardis that was pretty close to exact measurements (1:1 scale).  


I decided a quick trip to the office to get more accurate measurements, prior to buying supplies and starting my build, were required.  While getting these measurements is when I realized how BIG a "life sized" Tardis is; Mounting the lamp in the office hallway was going to be VERY close, even with nine foot ceilings.

[hschade]

I enjoy basic construction, but not the detail aspect of finish carpentry, so I decided to use as much "standard" lumbar sizes as I could and just adjust everything else so it cosmetically looked good. Not wanting to obstruct the office hallway too much, I already had to beg and plead to be able to decorate past the doorway thresh hold, I decided that 5 or 6 inches off the wall should be good. So I decided a 2x6 and 2x4 for each corner post, also I had some 2x6's taking up room in the garage from a past project. I still think a 2x8 for the doorway header would have been better/nicer, but what would I do with the left over 4 foot, and again I already had some 2x6's that were 4 foot. So with some glue and a little cursing that I did not buy long screws, I finally found some screws long enough to get the Tardis doorway put together.

[hschade]

Now that I was waiting on glue to dry, a little extra glue because those 2x6's were a couple years old, I figured the base plate / thresh hold was probably the next best thing to work on. I had taken measurements of every possible face and side of the doorway at work, and even drew a little picture of how thinks should be. So after a BUNCH of measuring, and remeasuring, and drawing and double checking, and measuring and more drawing, I broke out the jig saw and double checked the lines to be cut and then went for it. After the saw dust cleared, I broke out the tape measure and double checked everything.

Somehow I had not cut enough!!!! Guess that is better than cutting too much. So I double checked things again, and found where I had miss calculated, so I marked things again, and again double checked, and cut some more. Finally my measurements now matched what I was expecting.

[hschade]

Finally on to the doors! The doors were pretty straight forward, cut the ½ inch plywood to height (I had the lumber store rip the 4x8 sheet into two 2x8 sheets), then add 1x6 to each side, cut to length, then cut 1x4 to fit between the 1x6's, spaced out evenly to create the 4 recessed panels. I decided to "sandwich" the plexiglass I bought for the windows between the 1 bys and the plywood. So I marked all the panels, cut the window hole in the plywood, and using the plywood scrap from the window to mark the plexiglass. I setup the table saw to cut a "dado" on the edge of the 1 bys, were the window would be. Not having worked w/ plexiglass much I tried cutting it w/ a utility knife, but was struggling to get all the way through, so broke out the jig saw. (I have since read after scoring the plexiglass I should have just snapped it at the line.) The jig saw worked, but left one heck of a jagged cut, but it was going to be hidden, so I did not care.





Glue and screw the 1 bys on the plywood, leaving the top horizontal off, slide in the plexiglass window, then add the top horizontal.
Repeated the process for the 2nd door the next morning, after a trip to the hardware store for the 1x6's I had somehow missed initially.





Some additional pics of things cleaned up for the evening, and both doors the next day.

[hschade]

The second half of day two I needed another set of saw horses, and another set of hands, to attach the base plate to the door frame columns. So while waiting on mom and my sister to bring dads saw horses, I started in on adding the lock to the right hand door.
While pulling the deadbolt out of the package (ya I know it should be a Yale), it "fell" out of the decorative housing that is usually used when mounting them to a regular door. This was a pleasant reminder that they come apart, so rather than figure out how to mount it flush from the back, I figured I should be able to countersink it from the front and mount it flush that way. So a hole saw, and 5 holes with a drill bit, wallowing the holes a bunch, I was able to mount the lock even better than I had hoped.







Got the base plate mounted after that, and dry fitted the doors showed the frame was all out of square by about ¼ to ½ inch, just enough to make things a pain and a hassle. Thankfully 2 people, thanks to my sister again, and a good amount of pushing and pulling and we were able to tweak things enough to line up almost perfect.

Chores, visiting with family, and my social life kept the 2nd work day shorter than I had hoped, so much for a 2 day weekend build.

[hschade]

Day 3, after work, I started in on the roof tiers.  I again had to adjust some of the measurements for the layout and setting I am building for.  I was hoping to do all three of the top tiers, but after laying out the first two tiers I had used all the depth I had available.  A lot of the Tardis's have flat roofs, or at least look like it, so with some inner turmoil I was finally able to convince myself it would be good enough.  Glue and screw the top tier's together and then verify it fits the top of the doorway.  Mark some locations for dowels, and then drill and glue in one side and check how things look.





Two tiers look ok, but I still wish I could have done 3, maybe if I balance the doors in the frame it will look better.






With some of the night still available, I decided to do the mortices for the hinges, on the doors, and then work on the window grids.  I just eye balled the placement of the pieces, then measured and cut, and then trimmed, and then installed, trying to keep the fit as snug and tight as I could.  Then measure cut, trim, and install the next piece.  Repeat until the grids were all done on both windows.  Add some paper, to keep any glue off the plexiglass, then glue everything together.  Hindsight, while finishing my drink before heading off to bed, rather than cut each piece I could have cut each full length and ½ cut each where they cross, to provide a more stable structure.

[hschade]

Day 4, after work, is wood filler, mainly the real bad areas, and a base coat of paint.  From one of the kids' school projects I had most of a gallon of returned/rejected discounted paint that was a turquoise in color; I figured it would be great for a base coat or two.





Day 5, after work, I took off from the Tardis build.
Day 6, after work, was spent adding a second coat of base color paint to everything, so that it could dry real good while I was out of town for the next week.
Day 7 through day 15 were spent out of town, or packing/unpacking for my travels.

[hschade]

I was able to spend half of day 16 back working on the Tardis.  (It is so tall I was able to clamp it to the garage door to help keep it stable.)   Got the doors mounted to the frame and quickly realized I needed a door handle inside to be able to open the door.  




The fence post bracket, I had laying on the workbench, looked like it would be a decent handle in a pinch.
I also mounted the latch to the bottom of the left-hand door.  





Things went so well by that point I decided to start painting things.  Paint from another old gallon of white paint, yes from the same school project for one of the kids, went on the inside of the Tardis.





The florescent light in the center of the garage flickered one last time and went dark, not to come back on at all.  Thankfully I have a work lamp that I was able to break out, that actually provided a more targeted light source.  With the white coat done I decided there was time to do an initial blue coat as well, that took about 2.5 hours to finish.  
As other Tardis builders have said, the folks at the paint department were basically of zero help in finding/selecting the Tardis Blue paint color, even with the paint swatch I found on the internet (https://i.pinimg.com/originals/3e/df/fa/3edffad6a5667dfcac9bd368480cb86d.png) with several color codes.  
"You are going to have to match color samples to what you have there" is all the help they were able to give me.  Dark Iris, by Valspar (4009-5), is what I settled on and it looks really good to me.

[hschade]

Day 17 I went and checked on the Police Public Call Box sign that I was having made (ordered the morning of day 4), only to find out it was going to still take another 2 days or so.  Oh well, I know the dimensions, I should still be able to build the frame, and I can do a paper insert initially.  I cut some 1x4 to length then ripped them to 1.25 inches wide, I went a little wider (taller) than specifications to leave me some room to add back lighting (if I have time) (and also because I was not super comfortable ripping the boards that thin), then cut a grove about 1/8th of an inch in, on one side, for the sign.  I had been trying to figure out how to mount the sign frame to the door frame, when I realized I could add some scrap wood to the corners and use that to mount the sign frame.





I added the door handle to the right-hand door, so I had something to hang on to and to have something to grab on to if the whole structure needed stabilizing.  I then eyeballed the sign frame center over the doors, and screwed it in place.  I then went and found the PDF template of the door sign, on the Tardis Builders web site, and printed off a banner version at 95% of the original size (a rough guess of how much I had scaled it down for my particular application).  I cut the ends and taped the pieces all together and cut one edge before I realized folding the edges would probably be easier and cleaner.  Fitting the paper sign into the frame turned out to be way harder than I had initially expected.  The folded edge, at a corner, would go in fairly well, but as I struggled to get the middle into the groove the end would flop over and fall/pull out.  Eventually, with the help of some scrap plexiglass I was able to finally get the sign to stay in place enough to be able to put the removable top piece back on.

Now that there was natural daylight, I was able to see all the spots that needed a second touch up coat of paint, then I was able to add the left-hand door handle, the lock, and the laminated phone door sign.  The right-hand door is bowed a fair amount, I suspect the 1x6 had a bow in it that I missed, so the magnetic latch I had been playing with trying to do, needed a fair amount of work to get it to even barely work.  Place the roof tiers on it and when I step back, I can overlook most of the minor flaws.  I think it looks amazing!  

[hschade]

Next was to work on adding the 3D printed lamp I found on Etsy (I'd add a link, but not sure if it is allowed), that was within the size tolerances of my project, and for $12 is close enough for me.  (I did forget to take pictures of it before mounting it.)  Sure, I really wish it were ¼ to ½ and inch thinner, but again for $12 I should be able to make it work.  I added two dowel pieces to the top tier, then mark where they lineup on the lamp, then drill the lamp, carefully.  3D printed plastic drills even weirder than I expected, and quickly coated the drill bit rendering it near useless.  A quick use on some scrap wood removed the plastic coating and allowed me to drill the second hole.  Of course, things did not line up perfectly and by the time I got the lamp to fit over the dowels, there was just enough slop that I decided it needed glued somehow.  Wood glue was as useless as I figured it would be on the plastic, and the construction adhesive I had initially purchased still was unused, and ready to be returned, and the small amount this should require could not convince me that was the right answer.  I then spotted some caulking I had lying about from a recent bathroom project, and figured it would work for this application.  It should dry just hard enough to keep the lamp stable and in an upright position.

A text to my sister, and she and her boyfriend show up to help me haul the Tardis to my office.  Oh my goodness is it heavier than I expected!  Moving it around the garage I knew it was heavy, but picking it up and carrying it to the truck showed just how heavy it really was.  Get it in the office building, woohoo for after hours access, and haul it to the office door.  The Tardis frame fits over the door frame as if I had very carefully measured everything two or three times (I had in case you forgot from the previous posts).  I then went to open the right-hand door, and it hits the top of the door frame, by about ½ an inch or less.        




(These pics are with the Tardis just sitting there before I had to modify the right hand door.)




Some cursing and wondering how I could have missed by that much with so much checking and double checking of my measurements.  Finally we take the door off, by removing the hinges, and secure the Tardis frame to the metal door frame with some (5 to be exact) 40 lb pull magnets (that I found on Amazon) and some string.  (Understandably work did not want any screws in the walls.)

Rather than just trim enough off the door to just clear the office door frame, I decided to cut an inch off the top of the door, and then attach the cut off piece to the top of the Tardis doorway, so that it at least looks close.  As I/we were putting the Tardis door back on the frame I'm pretty sure I figured out where things went wrong; initially I had not planned on having a baseplate, possible trip hazard and all, but it was determined early on that I NEEDED it to keep the "legs" of the Tardis frame stable, square, and the specific distance apart for the doors.  When I added the base plate and measured the door height, again and again, I must have measured for the 82 ½" door clearance I was after from the top of the ¾ in base plate, instead of from the floor next to it.

[hschade]

The next day when people showed up, and saw the Tardis the little things, like the 1" piece of cut off door, most people did not notice, and the few people that did notice only noticed the little things after admiring/examining the Tardis for a while, or when I pointed the little things out.

The call box sign took about a week longer than expected, but looks WAY better than the paper sign I had temporarily done.






In summary, this was a WAY fun project that took 4 to 5 days of time, and total cost was about $250.00, but I think I could find/do the Police Box sign cheaper than the $75.00 I ended up paying at a local custom sign company.  I also think if I had not procrastinated as much, and was not out of town for little over a week this would have been an easy 2 weekend project.