Put a Lid On It

Despite the delay in updating this blog work has continued at a steady pace.

Having got the walls and the shelves in place the time came to cap it off.
This was a fairly simple adition of a piece of MDF that was approximately half the depth.
The reason for this is because the box would be a sealed environment and like all things even Goos need to breathe.
Plus this is their home in our home and to help with the smell air circulation is key.
Having installed the lower vents to help the digging pit and bottom level I needed to establish the main source of airflow.

This would be in the form of a mesh lid.
Ultimately Degus in cages will rattle bars and so I thought I would at least offer them a guesture.
Hopefully high enough up so that the world renowned poop throwers would not be showering the living room in feces, but flexible so we could still open the front to clean them.

The first step was to cut the pine - this would make it safe for them to chew (although I will be protecting it later in the process) so it was important that this part is as serviceable as any other bit.

The next step was to build a frame - I wanted to make a hinged lid that could be easily opened so I had an idea that a set size could, if the need arose, be removed and duplicated.

I then utilised the cut off bottom of the second Thickets cage that I built the double decker house from to create the top.

The wire was then attached to the frame.

As you can see this was to be the top piece (The bottom of the Thickets cage wouldn't actually yield enough for all four complete panels). I thought I would use the first complete piece to hold the rest of the box together for stability.

With the first half complete the idea was to replicate the framework.
As mentioned I was now out of sufficient mesh to completely clone the top section so I pressed on with the hinged section.

With the hinges in place it was simple to attach to the main box.

This system allows us to open the top up for playtime or cleaning.

Here I realised that with all this lovely Degu safe pine our girls would have a field day and I would forever be replacing the frame on the front which would cause it's own problems with housing so I took the step of protecting the edges with metal strips held in place with Gripfill.

This would leave us with a nice neat finish inside too.

And here the front project ground to a halt as I was stuck for inspiration as to how I could scrap together materials for it.
My initial plan was to think of some way to temporarily bodge the gap so the Goos could not escape and I cannibalisied their current home.
The other plan was to keep them in their carry case, but if that was going to take hours I felt it was unfair to contain them for that long because I was dithering.
However inspiration struck this weekend and using left over bits of perspex from the doors (also not big enough to create full panels) I created a dual material front.

We were actually quite pleased by the benefits of this. There is still the ventilation capacity and now we have a clear view of them lower down - which will pay off when the wheel is installed on this level.

Once that was finished is was merely a case of Goo proofing the inside.

And the top part was complete.