Box bodged baseboard

 I decided some time ago that this exercise in frugality would need to be a minimum space effort, after all fewer materials means less expense. With this in mind my starting point is the humble cardboard box, specifically a packing box left over from the move to our latest house seven years ago. It bears the scars of that previous use, peels where packing tape has been  pulled off and the scrawl of marker pen indicating long gone contents. It is, quite frankly, a bit of a mess but if things pan out the way I hope this may add to the concept.

 

I'm always pleased to get the baseboard building stage out of the way so let's whiz quickly through what I did to the box. The first job was to glue up the flaps at one of the ends to lend some rigidity. As I was using PVA I had to let it dry overnight before adding three inch deep doubling plates along the inside of what would be the bottom of the front and back sides. Again I had to wait for the glue to dry. with this done I cut what would be the layout surface, the trackbed, from another cardboard box (some IKEA packing) and glued that onto the doubling plates and to the sealed end. Once dry the remaining open end was stuck shut. Time now to access the underside to add some rigidity to what will be the trackbed.

I cut a hole with steel rule and a sharp blade in a Stanley knife. Further strips of three inch deep corrugated card, cut at the same time as the doubler plates, were used to triangulate and brace the base. With this done I could carefully mark out the front face of the box and cut out a viewing window.

 

This is probably as good a place as any to finish this instalment. So far I could argue that the materials have not cost anything, the storage box was bought some time ago but has already fulfilled that purpose so is effectively a recycled item. I had the PVA in stock but a recent check shows that a one litre bottle costs around £3.50 so not really a budget buster given that the sticking so far has only used a fraction of that one litre.