Enclosure Building Begins

[Toyguy]

Although I won't be ordering my dragon for another couple weeks, I've started building the new home. It's based on a 40G cage, with an aquarium background and some vinyl tiles for the flooring. I've scrubbed all the adhesive off, so hopefully that will take care of the fume problem. They may be temporary anyway as I need to get out to Home Depot tomorrow and see what sort of tiles they have. I only found one at Lowes that I liked and, for some reason, they were unable to cut them for me and I really didn't want to invest in a tool to cut a couple tiles. They kept breaking them and gave up after ruining 4 of them. It's too bad the cage is not 36" x 18" on the inside, rather than the outside. That would have been a much better design, as full-size tiles could have fit. Now everything will have to be trimmed to fit...

I also picked up the Accurite at Lowes, so the visit wasn't entirely wasted

Anyway, here's what it looks like at the moment...

The wiring, of course, isn't final and I need to think about furniture and decorations next. I might see what I can find while I'm out geocaching tomorrow. I know I'll need to clean it and bake it to kill off any parasites, but I think it might look better then the fake stuff.

Feedback is welcome, either way!

 

[ClydesGirl]

Looks like you are off to a good start. Hopefully you'll have better luck with tiles at Home Depot. I'm about to invest in some tiles for the new viv I'm building and I think I will go ahead and try to score/cut them myself with my Dremel, because I think I'm going to end up with some odd corners with the way I'm building the viv. How are you making out with lighting? Looks like you have an aquarium hood for your ReptiSun 10. Are you going to be able to build up the basking side high enough to get your beardie within 6-8 inches of the top?

 

[jeschardies]

That's a bummer they wouldn't cut the tiles for you. I bought 6x6 slate tiles at lowes, took them home, measured them and marked them up, took them back to lowes the next day and they made many cuts for me to nicely finish my vivs. Yes twice......

 

[Omunall]

Tha'ts a bummer about lowes. I used to work for that store, two years in the flooring department. I would go back and get a floor manager, or the flooring specialist (usualy weekdays in the mornings is the schedule they are supposed to work nation wide) and have them cut. If you went with something like the california beige (or some of the mass stock tile) then it's probably the worker that's running the machine too fast. Some of those tiles, especially ceramic, will chip or crack if they don't know how to use the machine. If you get the same person, tell them to go slow, and pull back on the cut every three inches or so, since those machines don't get serviced very often and the company blades they send...well they dull fast, and even something easy to cut like granite becomes a pain . lol~! If you buy the tile at lowes, they have to agree to cut them.

Good luck on the viv! It's looking nice