Building the base was the first start. Once the mdf was delivered I realised that it seems heavier than it really is but with the help of the futon providing the battens it was soon constructed. I lifted it on top of the dining table and realised this was not going to last. It was like having the Queen Mary berthed in your living room. So, forty eight hours later I moved the board into the second bedroom. This was quite difficult, a 2 x 1 metre board is not easy to move. I balanced one end on my three drawer pedestal, courtesy of BT and the other end on a piece of MDF from the desk that Fergus and I made many years ago. This was just about adequate until one day I lent on it and the whole thing slid off!

I needed to upgrade, so I made another plan. The futon battens were replaced with 3" x 2" and I bought four extendable chrome legs. I also bought an electric screwdriver. So this took a day to build and move into the bedroom and then a further few hours to fit the legs, however it is a lot more sturdy.

Something I found out later was that leaning over a 1 metre wide board to do anything on the far side of the layout is not good on the back, so I built a small stool, from futon and desk offcuts and this helped for a while but eventually I had to pull the board out from the wall by just over a foot. This enabled me to crawl under the board and stand up on the far side. In theory I could walk round the base except one corner of the room is taken up by a workbench which I made from the remains of the desk.