Funny story building 1st nic cage

Well, last night was the night. DH and myself had decided to build Lily her new home. I've been searching the site for ideas, and really liked quite a few. I had narrowed it down to a 2x2x3 grids high like Stephanies. Made the trip to Target this weekend to purchase additional grids, had all my zip ties handy, and asked my DH to have the guys at his work cut me a base to fit the required measurements. He comes home last night with 2 pieces of wood, neither the size I had requested. Well, lo and behold, he has decided that a 2x3x2 grids high would be a better size. Note he wasn't thinking ahead as to where in the living room this larger cage will go. So, I sucked it up and just watched as he began his endever of building the cage that I was going to build. At about 9pm he had the base on, the lower half completely zip tied to the base and tile on the bottom. At this point, the bugs are biting, and we work our way upstairs to the kitchen table to continue building. We get the 2nd floor on, a shelf, and her futon installed. While he was finishing up, i move furniture around, put Lily in her small cage on the coffee table, and come back to the kitchen to help him carry to the living room. First thing, well it won't make it over the fridge! So we move the fridge out of the way only to find that this monster cage will not fit through the doorway. It was a good thing the kids were all sleeping because he has now become very verbal and was determined this cage was going to fit through that doorway one way or another. NOPE! We ended up having to cutthe zip ties holding the 2 levels together to get it in. So if you could picture us sitting there re-zipping this cage, Lily watching with quite amazement, Get in in place, ( of course I need to get rid of a recliner). I look at DH and ask where is the door? He looks at me in total discust because he zip-tied the whole thing together with no way in or out. When I say fort knox I'm not kidding.

I must say, Miss Lily loves her new home. Of course it seems so big, because she is so small, only more reason for a 2nd bun!

Oh my goodness hahaha! I did the exact same thing once, built an NIC cage down in the spare room, only to find it wouldn't fit out the door, and I needed it in the dining room! Like your hubby, there was much verbal expressivness on my behalf

Us silly humans huh! I love how he didn't even make a door lol!

mental :foreheadsmack:note to self "must build cage in room it is going to be in"

Are you going to get any pictures of Miss Lily in her new cage? Now that I've read all the drama of the building it, I wanna see it :weee:. I bet she LOVES it!

I will be uploading pics very shortly

HAHA!!! That made me giggle.... This is exactly why I have built all of our cages, and not let Steve anywhere near them lol... I dread to think what he'd build!

I had similar problems when I built my very first cage, in that our old living room was very long and very narrow, and I built a 4 grid long, 2 deep and 3 high cage. I stayed up until like 4-5am building the thing, and then realised that there was no way it was going to be finished for the buns to sleep in there that night. So I decided to just put it up against the wall until the morning, but I couldn't turn it round! And since I hadn't moved enough furniture out of the way, when I had moved it out of the middle of the room, you could barely get in or out of the doorway until I sorted it the next day lol.... I'm sure my neighbours hated me that night!

I too, want to see pics of this cage, and how Lily is liking it! I can just imagine her sat there watching you, thinking 'silly hoomans! I could do that!' lol!

ok here are the pics, I still have to move furniture in order to make the room a little less crowded.





this is the view from the top





Food dishes now attached so no flipping of the dishes



I still have one more shelf to go along where the window is, this way she canget some fresh air, and a little sunshine. Shealso will have ceramic tiles on that shelf for the summer.

Lily loves all the run around space. She jumps from the shelf to the futon, down to her littler box. My hubby gets worried when she does it, but she does fine.

LOL Oh goodness. Somehow, that didn't happen to me. But! I did build one in a room, then couldn't get it out, haha. The reverse.

LOL, loved your story! Great cage too, love it, it's just like mine. Did you end up making a door? I have a couple of pics of my door showing how it works if you'd like to see them.

AngelnSnuffy wrote:

LOL, loved your story! Great cage too, love it, it's just like mine. Did you end up making a door? I have a couple of pics of my door showing how it works if you'd like to see them.

Click to expand...

It really is a great size cage for her. I ended up taking the 2 top panels and making a ziptie hinge. It has worked out fairly well since I can just take the broom and sweep any loose coco puffs and hay. I would love to see your doors and how they work as an alternative. I would like to do something where I can open it and allow her free range when she wants to.

Looks good!

All my doors are "ziptie hinged"
I have a 2x3x2 high for each bun. One row of the 3 panels on the top flips open and the entire front 3x2 wall flips open too, so I can get in really easily.

Your cage looks great! I love the little blue comfy shelf for her! What did you make that out of?

Here's a picture of how I had the doors on a 3x2 cage. It's 3 storeys high but can work with 2 levels:



Here's a different door system I used for the same size cage, just one storey shorter:



I hope that's clear enough, sorry if it isn't! The second design works better for cleaning, as the whole of the front folds out, so you can just easily sweep out all the hay etc without too much trouble, but the design on the other cage worked really well too. The doors are held together with cabin hooks, which look like this:



Hope that helps! How's Miss Lily loving her cage so far?

Jen xx

I like the doors opening on the side, I can see how cleaning would be much easier. I think there will be some tweeking when the DH is at work. (don't want to hurt his feelings :cry1

The shelf was an idea I had gotten from a guinea pig site. All you do is bend a grid into an L shape. I covered the bottom with a piece of cardboard, then took a towel and madesewed amini pillowcase to cover the whole thing. The whole thing is just ziptied from the top of the grid to where you want to hang it on the cage. It really worked well when she was residing in her smaller cage. BTW, the guinea pigs love it as well, I wasn't sure if they would use it, but one hides under while the other lays on the top.

here's Lily enjoying her shelf in her old cage.



She loves her new home. Even though I used sticky tiles, she binkies all over the place. There is so much room she runs laps. DH even commented that she looked much happier.

Now is this size cage good to house 2 buns? I mean, Lily is so tiny, and there really is an amazing amount of room, and lots of get away areas if need be.

I'm glad it helped! Hmm, men are quite sensitive to these things aren't they? If it were me I'd probably be insensitive and tell him straight, but I'm sure he'll understand once you explain and tell him it'll be easier to clean! :hug:

Oh and that shelf sounds even cuter now! I'd build one for mine if they would a) fit in it, and b) not destroy and pee on the towel! Also, I don't know why I said it was blue, it's quite clearly green... I'm not colourblind, I must have just had an odd moment lol

LOL, I even questioned myself on the color, so don't feel bad it happens to all of us.

From your pics, your buns look larger , but I would think zipping 2 shelves together would work too. Nice thing about the pillow case towel, is that it slides right off for easy cleaning. So far she hasn't peed on it, but as you can see likes to chew it.

Fancy355 wrote:

AngelnSnuffy wrote:

LOL, loved your story! Great cage too, love it, it's just like mine. Did you end up making a door? I have a couple of pics of my door showing how it works if you'd like to see them.

Click to expand...

It really is a great size cage for her. I ended up taking the 2 top panels and making a ziptie hinge. It has worked out fairly well since I can just take the broom and sweep any loose coco puffs and hay. I would love to see your doors and how they work as an alternative. I would like to do something where I can open it and allow her free range when she wants to.

Click to expand...

Here's mine! We use clips on either side to keep it closed. The two panels are zip tied together about two holes in each side.



Just lift it up, like this:



When closed, you can put the grids in the slots of the connectors:




Here's the clips we use, only the right side is on in this pic:

Nice cage! I'm about to have that problem, I think. Our NIC castle is 3 high, 2 deep, and 5 long. It's about as big as a 4ft tall twin bed. BF says it should "theoretically" fit through the doorway, but I'm not convinced... We'll see in a week or so!

LMAO! I could just imagine his face when he realized he'd forgotten the door! Lol. Especially after all the hard work transporting from the kitchen to the living room! Lol.

ETA: When you buy them at Target, what name/section are they under? I'm searching Target.com and I can't seem to find what section and name they're in. Thanks,

:biggrin2:

Emily