DIY project - 4 new cages

[Lemming]

Hey guys,

I want to introduce my DIY project. At the moment we have 4 cages. Two cages for two syrians and two cages for my four lemmings. My boyfriend doesn't like that all cages are spreaded in the living room, he rather likes to have all cages at one wall. I also want to give my pets more space so this is an excellent point where we have to start a new DIY project Of course it should be visiually attractive so that my boyfriend has no reason anymore to say that he doesn't like the cages

An here is my sketch


Our plan was to build four cages with chipboard and glas sliding doors. Each cage should have a size of 148 x 65 cm.
Now we have almost finished the four cages, we are only waiting for the glass to be delivered.

I want to show you some pics and give you detailed informations how we build them. Maybe some of you are interested in it.

Here is all the material we bought for one single cage:
2 x 19 mm white chipboard 148 x 65 cm (ceiling and floor)
2 x 16 mm white chipboard 63,4 x 60 cm (sides)
1 x 16 mm white chipboard 148 x 60 cm (back)
1 x 19 mm white chipboard 60 x 10 cm (middle support)
1 x 16 mm walnut chipboard 144,8 x 25 cm (front wood)
E-profiles for the glass slides
L-profiles for the ventilation windows outside
flat-profiles for the ventilation windows inside
mesh
ca. 10 m edge tape white
ca. 1,5 m edge tape walnut
ca. 40 screws (3,5 mm thick, 40 mm long)
felt pads for the floor of the cage
aquarium silicone
2 x 4 mm glass 75 x 34 cm for the sliding doors
2 x door nobs

The wood were cutted in the hardware store to the size we needed.

We started to iron the edge tape on the raw edges of the chipboard (just the edges that you will see later). On the instruction was written that you should put a piece of baking paper between the iron an the edge tape, but it also works without baking paper and it's also a bit faster:


The we runned with a wood block over it to press it a bit down and fix it better. We cutted the overlapping parts with an utility knife:


After that we grinded the sharp edges with sand paper.
Then we started to saw the ventilation windows. We draw the lines with a pencil on the chipboard and masked it with masking tape so that the wood don't splinters to much:


After that we drilled holes in the middle to have a starting point for the fret saw we started to saw:


And this was the result:


After sawing all ventilation windows we cutted the L-profiles with a hand saw and glued it with silicone on the ventilation windows (this side will face outside later):


We cutted the mesh and stapled it to the other side of the ventilation window (this side will face inside later):


(the number of allowed pictures is limited so I will continue in the next post)