Building 5x2x2 Rock Mountain!

[tatteberry]

Hello everyone! I finished up all on the gluing of the foam. The glue that I used was called Loctite PL300 FoamBoard (This is the blue stuff in the pictures). This stuff worked great!

In some of the pictures you can see a brown sealant around the edges. This is liquid nails, this worked okay but more expensive and was more Flexible then I wanted.


This is where I plan on putting the power strip and timers. Maybe only one timer depending if I put a night bulb in there.

Alright on to the finished background foam. I will have foam covering the lights, hanging from the top. But I will add that later on.

As you can see, there is a hole in the side of the cage. When I put sand in the bottom of the cage, this gives me an easier way to clean it out by sweeping the bulk into a trash instead of scooping and scooping and scooping some more. Then vacuum whats left over. I am going to make a dummy plug so from the inside of the VIV you cant even tell its there.

Moved viv inside to my work bench that has much better lighting to do the grouting.

And the grouting begins!

 

[tatteberry]

Mixing the grout is a pain I'm going to stop by the hardware store tonight and see if I can get a mixing attachment for my drill. That should make it easier :idea:

I colored the grout with a terracotta cement coloring. Color looks ok in the picture but its still wet(going for a bit darker shade), but it dried pretty light. next coat will be a little darker. I will post a dried picture of this first coat later tonight.

 

[w0554096]

Looking great so far. I hate grouting, lol.
The only thing worse than mixing grout is mixing sacrete.

 

[tatteberry]

Looking great so far. I hate grouting, lol.
The only thing worse than mixing grout is mixing sacrete.

Yeah hopefully I can find something to help mix. or else i'm going to have to make something that is faster :!:

 

[w0554096]

You should be able to get a turbine mixer that will work in most drills, and they're usually not too expensive.

 

[tatteberry]

Alright so I finished the first layer of grout last night and is coming along pretty nicely. I picked up a handy paint mixer and this helped out a lot. The grout was 10x easier to spread, and it was thinner so it covered more area.

This was right after I put it down (still wet)

This was 12 hours after, still a little bit wet

 

[w0554096]

That's looking awesome!
Thank god my beardies can't see your pictures, or they'd be way jealous. :lol:

 

[dragonov]

man you're doing awesome! looks really good!

 

[tatteberry]

Thank you! Posting more pictures later today

 

[SciencePam]

That looks amazing! How on earth are you going to be cleaning that thing once your beardie moves in?

 

[tatteberry]

That looks amazing! How on earth are you going to be cleaning that thing once your beardie moves in?

I'm going to put a few extra layers of grout to make it even harder so if I have to use a scrub brush I can.

 

[tatteberry]

Got another layer of grout on and it came out with the color that I am looking for.

Just a little premature exploring

I think he likes it!

 

[Oniko]

Oh my.god.

That is one lucky beardie!! It looks AMAZING! My bearded dragons want to come over and play

 

[tatteberry]

Oh my.god.

That is one lucky beardie!! It looks AMAZING! My bearded dragons want to come over and play

Thanks!

Should be finished in a week or so!

 

[tatteberry]

I made a thicker mix of grout and filled in a few gaps and the "High Traffic" areas. Hopefully this minimize the wear on where my beardie will be hanging out the most. I am going to do one more of these layers (but a bit thinner so I can cover the more area of the bottom half) then grout the final two layers.