I have basically done that in the end paldav, yeh it aint easy man. All I did for the front frame was use a lateral plane and CV tool it to get the right shape, then ended up pretty much what you did by extruding edges and tweaking them.

Yeh I realised after I posted that I had made it 1 mesh to look at it and accidently merged some vertices, I will have to go around and seperate it, never mind. The work of a novice is never ending!!

cheers bullet