Tardis Door

There are a few Tardis door Instructables, and this is our take on it. We used low cost materials, and tried to make it as non-destructive on the door as possible. This one is a door cover, and it also covers the door molding to make it a bit more realistic.

Parts:

• Cardboard - we just used some shipping boxes from the local home store.
• Foam Sheet - we used a 4'x8' sheet of 1/2" home insulating foam from the home store. Maybe this should have been fiber board since the foam is really kind of flimsy. It worked OK, though. We have since learned, though, that it is not dog-proof.
• Blue Paint - We used Behr Premium Plus Ultra Eggshell, and the color on the can says (S-H-540) Quiet Storm. There may be some web sites with Tardis paint colors you can look up.

The basic idea is to start with a flat sheet of cardboard and build up the details. After painting, it will look realistic.

The main part covers the closed door. The cardboard was cut to that size and taped at the joints to make a single sheet. Then the foam sheet was cut to the same size. An old police box will not match the aspect ratio of a standard bedroom door, so we had to modify the sizes a bit to make it look OK. Once we had the drawing looking right on the foam sheet, we cut it out with a box cutter and then glued the foam to the cardboard with some construction adhesive.

We wanted to box in the door frame molding to make it a bit more realistic, so we used a couple leftover strips of the foam sheet to make an "L" shape and ran that along the edges.

The top was the trickiest with two layers to build up, and it had to fit around the side pieces. See the pictures for details.

We used some cardboard to make the trim around the top sign. It is somewhat rough, but since it all gets painted up, we don't even notice.

For the handle, we ended up making one from some scrap pine to get the right size.

The lock was just a plastic Snapple drink bottle lid. Perfect size!

A thin strip of wood was run down the middle to look like the door opening.

The signs were all done on the computer and printed. You will want to choose which Doctor/Tardis door you want to emulate. The classic "Pull to Open" signs can be found on the Internet. The top sign took some trial and error to get right, and was laser printed with white letters on a black background.

This was a fun father / fangirl daughter day project - hope you enjoy yours!