how much will it cost to make a bin cage?

[Knotty]

As a few of you may know from my other posts, I am planning on making bin cages for each of my two chinese hammies, Nolah and Kolah.

I've decided that I'm going to make one bin cage to start with and put them both in there. In case I see any signs of fighting, I have the spare mini duna. If I do have to seperate then I will only temporarily house one in the mini duna, then I plan on making another pretty much identical bin so they both have the same space.

My question now is how much (average) will it cost to make one bin cage?? I'll be using the wilkos bin

[Lougarry]

You can get mesh from Wickes for about £3 and cable ties or bolts for about £3-5. Then it's just whether you want to buy a craft knife or are happy to use a kitchen one, and a screwdriver or something to make holes. I would say less than £20 including the bin.

[Erin Loves Dwarf Hamsters]

My larger ones cost me about £11.50 all together with no special tools used
I bought this storage box from Wilkinson for £10
Crystal Storage Box with Lid Clear 62ltr | Storage Boxes with Lids | | Plastic Storage from Wilkinson Plus

And a cheap mesh bird feeder for £1.50
Supa Wild Bird Peanut Feeder | Bird Tables & Feeders | | Wild Bird from Wilkinson Plus

I took the two green ends off of the bird feeder, the mesh unhooks from its self so you do that and lie it out flat so it is a square. I measured it's size on the lid of the box (or side if you prefer) then I just used a sharp kitchen knife heated on a flame (candles work) to cut into the lid and make a slightly smaller square than the mesh. Again with the knife I made lots of small holes along the edge of the square, you can do this by twisting the knife on the same spot, then I put the mesh over it and used some craft wire I already had to loop it through these small holes and through the mesh to hold it on tight. You can also use screws and washers for this bit though

[Gamina]

My Ikea SAMLA bin cost about £25 to make all in.

[kyrilliondaemon]

It depends a lot on the bin. Our bin cages've cost about £30 each but about £20 of that was storage boxes since we use three stacked ones for ours. The mesh and cable ties aren't too costly, cable ties are 100 for 99p on ebay from a few people

[Charley101]

I would also say no more then £20 if you are using the Wilko bin

[cathface]

I made one very recently so I'll just write down how much it cost for me:

Wilko's bin linked above: £10
Wilko's gardening cage mesh (60 x 150cm, 13mm squares): £4.98 (I only bought this because I have a 100 x 40cm tank cage and I used the leftover for my bin cage)
Homebase roofing bolts (M6 x 12mm) quantity 14 & washers (M6 x 25mm) quantity 10: £5 (though this was discounted from the 15% sale, would have otherwise been just over £6 without the sale)
Homebase value stanley knife: 99p
screwdriver: free, already had
lighter (to heat up the stanley knife/screwdriver): free, boyfriend's
total cost: £20.97

I reckon if you just got the small sheets of wire mesh instead of a 60 x 150cm roll, you could whittle off at least half the price probably! and you wouldn't necessarily need a stanley knife - I only bought one because none of the knives in my flat are particularly sharp haha.

[Poetgonemad]

Hey i tried doing the bin containers. They're so much more trouble then they are worth, they dont look that well, and my hamster escaped four times In two days! I went and bought two 10 gallon tanks and one 20 gallon for my hammys and even though they are quite large they still have plenty of room and theres so much room for them to burrow, and i can see them burrowing under their bedding which is really cool. I spent around 75$ for aquariums and lids but it is so worth it. They look so nice, fit on shelves and they cant get stuck or hurt theirteeth on he bars.