Post by Corvidophile on Nov 29, 2015 16:49:26 GMT -5
...is a jewelry display case, from a retailer who went out of business and was asking $30. I bought it maybe five years ago, for my rats originally. They loved it too, and because the walls are either glass or melamine, it didn't even smell too well-loved. 
My husband made the doors out of wood, I stained them and gave them a few polyurethane coats for waterproofing, then stapled 1/2 inch hardwear cloth to the inside. The edges are all overlapped by the enclosure, so there's nothing available to start chewing on and ripping off when the doors are shut. To clean it, I vacuum dry stuff and then wipe down the walls and floor. The little ridges at the entrance are actually a track for sliding doors, I was gonna unscrew it but put the cage into use before I got around to it and found that it actually works really well as a crumb catcher, litter and shed hair falls into it instead of on the floor.
Here's a full photo of it when it was a rat cage, I forgot to take one showing the whole thing in ferret mode.
And the items inside it- The plastic house was a dollhouse I found at the flea market for $2, I have the roof too but it was too sloped to climb on, so I replaced it with cardboard that I pitch when it gets dirty.
The stairs are a fabric magazine rack that was, um, heavily edited over the years by teeth and scissors trying to neaten up what the teeth did, replacing the some of the slings with jeans legs, etc.
I'm showing it as I put it back together after a cleaning so you can see all the different things in there that are hidden when it's finished.
First I lay down the ground blanket
In goes the house and the magazine rack becomes stairs up to the second level
I lay a blanket over the top of the house and down the stairs, absorbs stuff and makes an easy-climb ramp over the magazine ramp so he can use the slings as stash areas. It also separates the space into a bathroom and cleared exit/entry path, a bedroom area where blankets get tossed in big lumps, and the second floor where he eats
I put big boxes up there as a feeding den and throw them out as they get dirty.
Here, we have the water setup- up near the feeding den he has a bottle, it's a little leaky, so I have his water bowl directly below on the first level in the bedroom area for it to drip into.
Doors shut, showing the locking system- a public bathroom style thingy is drilled into the frame of the display case with a hole for it to slot into on top of the bedroom-facing door in the left of the photo (it usually stays closed), and the right hand has a thumb-turn lock like on shed doors.
The doors were put on with full height hinges because I knew I'd be hanging heavy things off the doors, so I wanted to distribute the stress as evenly as I could so the screws wouldn't pull out.
Sorry for the bad lighting and focus, with the combo of low lighting and reflective items, it was a pain between balancing when to use flash and when I was better off leaving it a little unfocused but value correct.
My husband made the doors out of wood, I stained them and gave them a few polyurethane coats for waterproofing, then stapled 1/2 inch hardwear cloth to the inside. The edges are all overlapped by the enclosure, so there's nothing available to start chewing on and ripping off when the doors are shut. To clean it, I vacuum dry stuff and then wipe down the walls and floor. The little ridges at the entrance are actually a track for sliding doors, I was gonna unscrew it but put the cage into use before I got around to it and found that it actually works really well as a crumb catcher, litter and shed hair falls into it instead of on the floor.Here's a full photo of it when it was a rat cage, I forgot to take one showing the whole thing in ferret mode.
And the items inside it- The plastic house was a dollhouse I found at the flea market for $2, I have the roof too but it was too sloped to climb on, so I replaced it with cardboard that I pitch when it gets dirty.
The stairs are a fabric magazine rack that was, um, heavily edited over the years by teeth and scissors trying to neaten up what the teeth did, replacing the some of the slings with jeans legs, etc.
I'm showing it as I put it back together after a cleaning so you can see all the different things in there that are hidden when it's finished.
First I lay down the ground blanket
In goes the house and the magazine rack becomes stairs up to the second level
I lay a blanket over the top of the house and down the stairs, absorbs stuff and makes an easy-climb ramp over the magazine ramp so he can use the slings as stash areas. It also separates the space into a bathroom and cleared exit/entry path, a bedroom area where blankets get tossed in big lumps, and the second floor where he eats
I put big boxes up there as a feeding den and throw them out as they get dirty.
Here, we have the water setup- up near the feeding den he has a bottle, it's a little leaky, so I have his water bowl directly below on the first level in the bedroom area for it to drip into.
Doors shut, showing the locking system- a public bathroom style thingy is drilled into the frame of the display case with a hole for it to slot into on top of the bedroom-facing door in the left of the photo (it usually stays closed), and the right hand has a thumb-turn lock like on shed doors.
The doors were put on with full height hinges because I knew I'd be hanging heavy things off the doors, so I wanted to distribute the stress as evenly as I could so the screws wouldn't pull out.
Sorry for the bad lighting and focus, with the combo of low lighting and reflective items, it was a pain between balancing when to use flash and when I was better off leaving it a little unfocused but value correct.
