Arts and Crafts day (Dial up death)

[steelsack]

Hey all, realized I hadn't posted in forever so I figured what the heck, rise from the depths and say hi. Here's an enclosure I put together over the course of this year. Decided to stray from the conventional racks and glass tanks and make something fun to live in and look at. Looks better in person (dontcha hate camara flash), but here's Floyd's new pad:

And a couple more shots..



The little door in the middle of the top is an access panel to the light and things that I keep up there. What took the longest was constructing the fake rock wall. For anyone interested I took a couple pics during the process. First I made shelves and stuck them where it seemed appropriate. I added busted up pieces of styrofoam as well as a couple cans of spray foam, just hot glueing them here and there to create lots of variation. I also stapled a good amount of hardware cloth over the shelves and all around to keep it from looking too flat and to give the drywall mud that I later used as the paintable "fake rock" something to stick to. Here's a couple shots about halfway through...
Putting pieces on:


After clueing all the foam and such on it's a good idea to take a knife and scratch the foam up so it has a rougher surface and looks more rock-like:

After I had it to satisfaction I went and bought a five gallon bucket (60 lbs) of drywall mud and started the long job of covering every inch of the wall with it.....it took it ALL-can we say heavy, boys and girls? It goes on pretty messy, I questioned my sanity many times:

Then I added more to fill and cracks and holes. Then I sanded it. And sanded it. And sanded it some more till it looked about right. Went to the woods and got a cool little top of a dead tree that fits in there like a puzzle piece and set it in for a rough idea of what the monster I was creating was going to look like:

After that I bought 12 cans of FleckStone spray paint and went crazy spraying from every possible angle. when that was done I got some non toxic poly and coated it nice and thick four times. Walls, floor, ceiling, everything. sanded the tree and poly'd the heck out of that too as it's obviously too huge to bake. Made a UTH out of pipe wrap on an adjustable dimmer..works great. Total cost with plexiglass is about 275. Not bad.
All in all it was a fun project, sorry I didn't take more pics. Turned out pretty cool.....I have added more vines and moss, and the cypress mulch is a great substrate. Floyd seems to really dig it, he'll stretch way out and climb all over that tree.

[Smulkin]

Man thats awesome!

Appreciate the details on how you did the fake rock wall - that was the first thing that struck me - really excellent work there!

[jglass38]

Looks awesome! Nice job with it!

[Boarder4l154]

dude, that is awesome! thanks for taking the time to show it step by step... makes it look so easy... but I'm not even gunna try, i'd end up covered in some sort of goop. great enclosure, I'm sure Floyd loves it.

[Danielle(THM)]

That is the sweetest thing I have ever seen , it would take me way too much time, and even then I probably would've given up to make something else.

[Melicious]

That's absolutely beautiful. I'm so jealous.

[cassandra]

That's freaking awesome! I was just chatting with Jamie over MSN the other day, describing the cage I wanted to build Carmen someday - and like, then you post something even better!

[steelsack]

Thanks for the kind words, everyone

[jglass38]

That's freaking awesome! I was just chatting with Jamie over MSN the other day, describing the cage I wanted to build Carmen someday - and like, then you post something even better!

Who are you? I don't even know you, crazy woman...

[cassandra]

Who are you? I don't even know you, crazy woman...

Oh you are in such trouble now...