DAY 7

This ended up being a long but pretty productive day.
Sun was out early, so in the garden by 8am and out with the wood yet again.
Today's jobs: Painting, Filling, Sawing, Swearing. Well OK, maybe the last one wasn't planned, but you'll soon see why I added it!

First off, my helper needed to be involved and do something for today, so safest option, get the base out...



and let him fill over the holes where the screws are put in.



and he didn't do a bad job finding them all either!



While he's busy I can do some painting without fear of small feet running paint around the house or garden.



I think I've probably had all I can out of the first tin of paint now, 8 pieces of post, all the base frame, one side of a wall, one side of the floor.
So I mixed up the second tin of white primer with some blue to carry on, then suddenly realised I don't actually need to bother with blue on the inside of the Tardis as an undercoat, so that'll be a trip to the DIY store this week for another white tin, then swap them around depending which side I need to paint. Probably saves about £5 a tin, so every little helps!

My helper was off to his grandparents for the weekend so once he'd gone I thought I'd do some more sawing.
I hadn't really been paying attention too much when he'd asked for me to move the base earlier in the day, until I went to go and lay it down again and see what he'd park in it's space....



darn those daleks get everywhere!

Anyway, I needed to cut the rest of the base



so carefully measured it, 142​cm x 49​cm, dragged one of the 8​ foot sheets out of the shed to cut it and spotted I had bought 3 of the 18​mm thick sheets for some reason.
As I was happily sawing away I started to wonder why I would have bought 3 of them. One for the base, one for the roof, what on earth was I planning to do with the third?

And then I found out....



Insert expletives now.

Yep, the final sheet was obviously ready for me completing making a hash of something.
Now bear in mind I'm still cutting all this with a handsaw, so having to do this twice is not ideal!
I'd measured the width, but didn't measure the length as I (wrongly) thought I remembered cutting from top to bottom on the last one.
Well, in fact I did, but had the wood the other way around.
As I have the short term memory of a goldfish it came as no suprise to my wife who had come out to see what all the swearing was about and just walked back indoors shaking her head (and probably silent laughing at the total plumb I'd been..again).

Still, a short while later, the base piece is cut to the right length



It's getting late now and I don't want to be doing any more sawing, so I decided to screw a couple of the side poles together.


How many screws to use is the question? what happens if I don't do enough? can I do too many?
I'll go with the final question and say no, can't do too many and stick about 20​ in each one (about 1 every 6​ inches), that's certainly not coming apart!





The £7 pair of clamps from eBay are well worth the money, as I even got a second one put together.

And here we go, final picture from day 7 and suddenly I can see it's heading in the right direction



So they're not fixed yet, just standing in place, the floor needs the second half painting and then fixing, but at least I can sort of stand it in the right place at least.

There you have it, another day gone, enough done to look like I'm getting somewhere and by the time I'd put it all back in the shed again, I felt like my arms had stretched so much I could touch my toes without even bending over!

Day 8 will be some point after I can lift something heavier than a laptop again!