"Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things"

Edgar Degas, French Artist, 1834-1917

Well Mr Degas, you may well be greatly respected, but I can most definitely assure you that you are talking out of your arse here!

I started off not knowing what I was doing, so therefore I should've immediately proceeded to great things, but that didn't happen!

I've been priming my construction to date with some oil-based primer that I'd had tinted blue. I bought a spray gun specifically to assist with the painting, since I thought it would provide better results and be much faster.

Well, I was wrong on both counts!

You see, I need decent thick coats of primer on my woodwork to, so that it helps weather proof the TARDIS by providing a strong base and filling in any cracks in the construction that I'd missed with filler so aid in waterproofing the thing.

Unfortunately, my spray gun is better suited to light, delicate, coats which is not at all what I wanted.

So, whilst I've "primed" the wood now, I can see that I need to go over it again, and I'm pretty certain if I use the spray gun, even more layers will be required.

So, it looks like I'm going to resort to a trusty paint brush because that will allow me to layer on more paint in less coats.

"Be Prepared..."

Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Scouts, 1857-1941


Again, I've not been here for a while! It seems that I've got a little too hung up on preparation, and not hung up enough on progress!

Allow me to explain.

Since last week. I've been out and bought the following

• Sandpaper
• Spray Gun
• Oil-based primer, tinted blue
• Face mask (don't want to be poisoned by my wood preserver)

amongst other things anyway.

In the meantime, I've been doing little things with the TARDIS itself. Filling, sanding, filling, sanding again.

I also took some time to try and seal some of the gaps using this expanding foam stuff that is so truly horrible to use, I've vowed never to use it again! This stuff is so damn sticky, if you get some on your hands it takes quite literally hours to remove it - and that's despite using any solvent I could lay my hands on (and generally they stuck to it too!).

Anyway, after what seemed like the upteenth time of filling and sanding, I had an epiphany!

This is a TARDIS. It is supposed to look like an aging police box. Aging police boxes don't have nice smooth surfaces - they will be dented, bashed, smashed in places, dirty etc, etc,etc.

All this time, I've been striving for a perfection that I not only find impossible to achieve, it is wholly inappropriate for it to be that "perfect" anyway. More fool me!

Anyway, today I stopped with the filling and sanding of the roof, and sprayed it liberally with wood preserver. I still need to do the corner posts too, but I'd already filled them a bit more today, so that will have to wait for another day - and another sanding!

The roof is drying as we speak, but sods law it's not as warm today as it has been for the past few days so it isn't being helped along much at the moment by the Florida weather.

Once it is dry, and the corner posts have received the same treatment, it will be time to apply the primer. This will hopefully provide a long lasting weather proof coating, but only time will tell! I guess that I need at least a couple of decent coats, so this is going to take me through to the middle/end of next week I expect before I can get any more real construction work done. That's the trouble with the oil-based paints - they take that much longer to dry, but I think they're more durable.

EDIT: Wtf? Do I know anything about paint? No I don't! So how do I know that an oil-based one is more durable??? It's all just speculation!