Pussy Palace: Extreme Birdhouse Conversion

by skiedra in Living > Pets

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Pussy Palace: Extreme Birdhouse Conversion

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Two months ago we found a homeless kitty in the city I work in.

One thing led to another, and now we have a fine, curious and playfull kitten living in my garden. Keeping her indoors all the time did not seem like a good option.

After taking her to vet and taming a little bit, she was ready to stay with us.

We needed a place for her to stay - therefore a pussy palace was born :D

Few years ago I attempted to build an extreme birdhouse - which is an art form by itself.

The result sucked somewhat and I never got to do an instructable on it. There are some photos of it on my other instructable:

7-in-1 summer squeeze: hot tub, deck, swings, arbor, firepit, birdhouse, hammock swing

Tools used for this instructable:

Electric screwdriver

Handsaw

A bunch of woodscrews.


Materials used:

Wooden children playset ladder. Had some left over.

Sisal rope, 10 m.

Regular unplaned pine board, 1 inch thick, 4/6 inch wide.

One "corner" holder.

Couple of "toys" for the ropes.

Extreme Birdhouse: an Insane Art Form Itself

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A few years ago I attempted at building an extreme bird house. You can google it - there are a lot of photos . Some of them are huuuuge and absolutely awesome.

Not having a proper table saw I was unable to do exact angular cuts, which made the entire build less than proper. That is why I never made an instructable on building an extreme birdhouse. I tried to photo different angles, so you can check out how it is constructed.

The thing weights around 30 kilos total.

The clear varnish did not hold well against the weather, and needed repainting as well.

It did not get much use by the birds, therefore we decided to convert it to cat housing.

Initial Holding Structure

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Having a left over kid's climbing set ladder, I used it to construct a holding structure for the house.

An extra board went to strenghten the back.

4 cuts at equal height, screws to hold them.

Cat House, Scratcher and Toys

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After constructing the holding structure, I attached two regular pine boards to hold the cat house.The house was smaller than the opening below.

After that, attached a small shelf of around 15cm x 25cm in size, to help the kitty to get up. Used a corner shape holder.

Bought and used some 10m of natural rope to make a scratcher and some leftover sisal rope to attach various knots and toys.

Secured the rope using regular drywall screws.

Paint It Black..... Uh.... I Mean Pink. Pink Is the New Black :D

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This is the point when I had the chance to use the pink paint without too much explanation to anyone ;)

Seriously, the varnish was washed away by the weather and needed repainting badly.

Used enamel white paint for the sides and pink spray paint for the roof - 2-3 coats.

Additional Climber

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Used a 10x10 cm pole to make a climber with some shelves for the kitto.

Used 3x5 cm bars and three screws to make the holders.

The kitto seems to like that.

One can put litter or food/water boxes below the house.