I am so exhausted. Hours and hours I messed about lol. Never again. But it's all done now - except a couple of little areas that need thinking about.
I gave up with hammocks, grass ones and chill n chew mat ones and decided they're not for me really. So I decided to raise Charlie's house instead, putting it on stilts, to reduce the fall height. Except I didn't have any stilts so I used his old guinea pig house upside down, filled it with substrate and sat his normal house on top - which supported it well. No mean feat as I used the house roof to slide under his normal house to keep his nest, hoards and potty area in tact!
That worked much better and the layout is now more like his old cage, height wise. I still need something to put over the bendy bridge house entrance in case he falls on it. For now I've hung the second sputnik over it (with the back tab unattached as it goes under the top door) then realised he can't actually get up the bendy bridge to get on the house roof then, so moved the sputnik along a bit. So at some point I need a better solution to hang over the bendy bridge, and also I think his water bottle might be a bit low for him now, but apart from that all went well.
I got him out of the pet carrier and put him in the cage. He was a bit cautious for a few minutes, went in his house, came out again, then in a very laid back kind of way, explored the whole cage, nibbling things along the way - I reckon he's got it all sussed out now. He then stuffed his pouches mega full and went to bed.
So this is Charlie's old house, upside down on the base of the cage at the far end, and his current house in the foreground with his nest in tact
His current house sat on top of it, high-ish up in the cage, with his nest still in tact inside
Big mess in our living room while I'm setting up the cage and transferring everything over Fitch everywhere (and all up the stairs as well as it kept dropping off me
Almost finished - just the bendy bridge to hang something over and an area down the side of the house to block off with something
Top view - the right hand end is just about identical to what he had before, except for the new long shelf along the back.