Relative Dimensions

I built a TARDIS door for my son's bedroom last Summer — I don't think I ever wrote about it (though it might explain the gap in posts just before August). This was my wife's idea for a Birthday present.

Long ago, when my son was still an infant, we had put up a sort of wooden porch door (you know, with a screen) to be able to keep the door closed without completely closing off the room. It stayed in place long after we had any real need for it, and it was her idea that we take this door, make some minor modifications, and paint it. How difficult (or expensive) could it be?

It was my idea, however, to completely remove everything but the outer door frame, and build back in the details. And I did. (See the photo below.) If it was worth doing, it was worth doing properly. It might have been easier if I had something better and more precise to cut wood with than a jigsaw, but with good fortune and some strategically-applied wood putty (and a few visits to the local Home Depot), it turned out reasonably well.



From here, it was mostly a matter of working out the details — matching the paint color to the toy TARDIS, finding a good-sized decorative door handle, small mailbox lock and key, picture frame for the door sign, prismatic plastic lighting diffuser for the windows, et cetera, et cetera. And painting. Lots and lots of painting. Painting was the point where I felt as though all my hard work might be completely ruined, because it never looked as good as I thought it should. Somehow, though, it turned out well in the end — that, or I learned to overlook any shortcomings. (I wish I had taken a better photo of the finished door in better light, before it was hung in place.)

What made everything much more complicated, though, was that I had about three days to work on this while my son was away, and then another three days to finish it, in secret, after he returned. I was touching up the paint and installing the door sign the morning of his birthday, and I had just enough time to quickly (very quickly!) hang the door before picking him up from summer camp that afternoon. His reaction upon seeing it was completely wonderful.

Someone has just asked me to build another. I'm not entirely anxious to go through all that all over again, but I still have all my notes and sketches and measurements, and a few ideas that might help speed the process along — or at least eliminate a bit of the frustration I experienced along the way. (Priming the wood, for example, might allow me to avoid an additional coat of paint for coverage.) Who wouldn't want the chance to go back in time and do something all over again, but better?