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Building my bearded's new cage-with photos!

missinasworld

missinasworld

Missina
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Today my friend Rocco and I started work on my bearded dragon's (Baxter) new home! Its going to be 42" long, 23" deep and 24" high. We have done a lot but still have more to go. One of the next steps will be to finish the front with sliding doors. We already have the rails for them and all that fun stuff, but I'm finding plexiglass is pretty pricey so we are going to limit the amount of plexi in the front by adding a 4" frame to the front of the cage..I think it will also look nice. Also we have to make up our minds on how to do the inside. I want to add a few climbing and basking areas so we are looking at using hardware cloth to shape and connect ither great stuff or fiberglass along the inside sides and back of the enclosure. I just don't know if Great Stuff would be ok becaues Baxter has pretty nice claws. What does everyone here think?
And now to the good stuff, photos. If you see something wrong let me know!
004.jpg

In this photo we were attaching the sides, back and bottom of the cage
005.jpg

the wood it is standing on is just left overs and not part of the cage
006.jpg

after putting those parts together we used a non-toxic sealant to seal the wood agasnt water.
009.jpg

then we made 45degree cuts in 1"x4" wood to form the top of the cage and then used a staple gun to hold them and wire hardware cloth to the top.
010.jpg

we had to make sure it all fit nicely..didn't want to mess it up.
011.jpg

next I hooked up the basking light so I can turn it on and off on the outside of the cage but it can be on the inside, still out of Baxter's reach. I will have a UV light running along next to it that will cover the other half of the cage but that will just sit on top of the wire..i don't really want to run cables and stuff or spend more money when I already have 6 of these lights laying arond from my fish tanks that I had up north.
013.jpg

while I worked on the light, Rocco installed the hinges to make the top open and close..I will NEVER use the lid as a door were this cage will be sitting at but he really wanted them and it will help when building up the decor on the inside.
015.jpg

:) it opens woot!
017.jpg

used aquarium silicon to seal the inside of the cage so I can put sand or whatnot into it

Ok I do have more photos here http://missina.cjb.net/animalpage/dragons/20090429/
but this is all I really feel like typing up tonight. Gotta let things dry and sit until I get time to finish this, hopfuly by Friday. Will post more photos then.

Missina
 
TattooLost said:
Looks good so far! What kind of wood are you using?
Click to expand...

thanks and MDF. the sealant didn't do to good of a job on the bottom so I put lionilum down. here are some updated images from a few days ago:
018.jpg

putting in the wire frame for the Great Stuff to go on
020.jpg

the frame finished
021.jpg

part of the Great Stuff setting
022.jpg

another photo of the Great Stuff round 1.

Some things I have discovered I will never do again:
1. I really wish I had gone with strofoam instead of awire skeleton.
2. I will never use MDF again and I don't really remember why I used it in the first place..um yeah..moving along
3. Im going to try to get it all done the first day because after the first day you run out of steam lol

Well the next things to do are the finish the Great Stuff application, I need to glue down and seal the linolum I got for the inside, make the frame for the front, low the tracks down for the doors and put the plexiglass or glass into it so the doors work..o and add a rubber seal to the top were the door is up there to make my partner happy lol
 
I sort of moved to another forum but didn't want to just forget abou this one. So we are now pretty much done.
029.jpg

we finished adding the GS to the top parts of the wire frame and cage and then used foam from a new grill to do the bottom areas-which turned out really nice. Then we sanded and shaped the base material and covered it with dyed stucco. After several days of letting stucco dry and adding another, more smooth and thick layer-it was time to lay in the tracks for the slideing front doors. this was probably the most difficult part but in the end we were able to make it work.
036.jpg

this is a view looking into the cage while drilling in the top track.
040.jpg

This is what the cage looked like after the tracks were in and the front frame was on, and stained and made to look pretty. The only things left are to wait for it to all dry and cure, then add the sand and the dragon!
I have more photos here to with a more day to day log: http://missina.cjb.net/animalpage/dragons/index.html

alright thats all I guess.

Missina
 
Wow, that really turned out nice! Nice work!

I've got to build something soon for our beardie. I dunno if I'll use the handi-foam stuff, but i'm definitely gonna build a faux rock background and basking shelf now! :)

Now just do the DIY write-up! lol
 
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