There's a floor in my plan...

DB says: Last week I dismantled the layout that I'd started and promptly stopped almost a year ago - the most incomplete layout I've ever made. I'm not sure I would have removed it if I'd remembered this bilious green carpet was underneath, but on the plus side, the room is a lot easier to navigate now without the large over-built wooden structures and piles of junk that tended to form under them.

Lessons learned: That layout was going to be bulletproof. People could stand on it. As such it was heavy, inflexible and involved a lot of carpentry (Mr Birch, our old woodwork teacher - who seems to get a surprisingly large amount of airtime on this blog - would be happy).

But how many people have a really (really, really) permanent layout? People move houses, interests change... I vow the next construction will be simpler, easier and faster to make, more flexible to allow for future changes and not take up the entire room's floor.

A layout passes, and I didn't shed a tear. It's the circle of life.