The cardboard also makes a cheap disposable covering for a concrete garage floor - much easier to keep the dust down than with an untreated concrete surface. And more forgiving on edges of plywood etc.
I would strongly support building as many the sub assemblies as you can before putting the hull together.
I don't have much room so building the centreboard case, skeg, mast steps early made sense. With hind sight I should have epoxied the floor boards and seats at the same time. If I had bought the sailing kit with the basic kit I would have made the rudder and centreboard early too.
Paul
Unfortunately due to my less than ideal build facilities I don't have concrete floors t worry about. I am using cut down sheet of plywood as main work surface for most build stuff. I plan on using at least one piece of the cardboard for cutting templates out for the foam flotation later.
and PaulSG, I am doing exactly as you advise, and building many sub assemblies first. Mainly because I have a heated workspace that I can build smaller stuff, but will have to build hull outside, and it is not quite warm enough to pull that off yet. Doing the centerboard trunk and rudder cassette are good things to imporve my confidence before I commit to the all imprtant hull. So far, build seems very straightforward, and no surpises, except the pleasant surpise that the MAS epoxy does not stink like West Systems. My wife might even let me expoxy the main hull board puzzle joints together in the house....
Well, I have just about completed the Peapod, and while I don't know the NE Dory any better, I am very glad I picked the Peapod. It was a lot of work, and I made plenty of mistakes (most fixable) and my build space wass less than ideal but I was able to do some epoxy stuff in an interior space in cold spring, then heat strategic parts of the hull in a garage tent to keep moving forward until weather cooperated. I hopes to be done late August early September, which I knew was ambitious, so I am happy being only 3-4 weeks behind schedule. So much sanding! Also I suspect I used more epoxy than was strictly necessary based on having to order more, and finding final fittings often expecting things to be a tad thinner than they were on my boat. Also, I think I will be trailering the boat rather than mooring it. We shall see.