Time and Relative Dimension in Space!

(From http://www.zetacity.com/insidethetardis/)

My roommates and I are huge Doctor Who fans. Between the three of us, we have at least one, and probably two, sonic screwdrivers with us at any time. And so it always seemed natural (and perhaps necessary) that at some point we would transform part of our apartment into a TARDIS. Now, we had two options -- the back end of a closet that jutted out into the hallway, was roughly of the correct proportions and size, but had no door, and our coat closet, which of course has a door (as coat closets tend to do) but was improperly shaped. We decided that the ability to enter and leave our Tardis was more important than getting the size just perfect, and so for the New Year we transformed our coat closet into a time-traveling space ship, or a blue police box, whichever you like.

First, we covered the walls with blue butcher paper -- here is Ayn covering the first wall and cutting out the hole for our buzzer. (David, who is superhumanly tall and not pictured, stood on a chair to affix the paper to just below the picture frame molding high up on the wall.)


Here's what it looked like when one wall was finished.

Next we covered the other wall and cut out a hole for the door -- and wrapped the door in blue paper.

We cut out a little hole for the latch so it would still be functional.


Next step: The sign that goes over the phone. (Police telephone for use of public...) We decided to put this over our buzzer/intercom just for the gags. We had thought of making a little box out of foam core or poster board that actually could be pulled open to reveal our buzzer, but that seemed like a bit too much work for not enough extra awesome. And too much work to buzz someone up to the apartment, too.


First we tried to put both bays of windows on the door, which would correspond to the Tardis being the same width as the door frame. That looked okay but not great.
Next, we made the Tardis twice as big as the door frame, with two sets of six windows, one on the door and one off. Since the wall with the buzzer is about the length of the door frame, it only got one set of windows.

Here's the telephone sign with windows above.
Next step were the "Police (Public Call) Box" signs on the top of each side. They're white lettering on black, so we couldn't just print out a banner for them (at least not without using up a whole lot of printer ink). We cut the letters out of white paper and glued them on to strips of black construction paper. Here's Megan cutting out letters, and Jonathan making windows (okay, so this is a little bit out of order. So sue me.)



We made two sets of letters - here they are all cut out! We only used half of the second set, since the wall with the buzzer on it is about half the length of the wall with the door on it.


Here's a close up of the finished and mounted sign.

And here's the Tardis with the signs glued together and mounted on the wall!


The only thing that remained was to give it a bit of the wood-paneling look. So we drew on panels with a sharpie. They aren't very obvious, and we'll maybe draw in shadows or at least make the lines broader over time, but we have a completed Tardis, and at the moment we are just basking in the glory of the shining gold time vortex housed inside. Or maybe that's just a bunch of coats. We're not too certain.

One final picture: Megan loves her Tardis; now she's just hoping it comes with Jack or the Doctor inside.

Credit goes to Ayn, David, Jonathan, Megan, Pat, and myself, in alphabetical order.