Oh boy, I haven't been around in ages! The kits and I are both doing well, leading fairly uneventful lives... well, about a month ago, we found Squee with a carpet thread hanging out of her bum! We took her to the vet and he managed to pull the string out after he felt that there wasn't much left in her. He gave her a shot in case the string cut her, but since she had been acting and eating normally, he felt that she would be fine. And she was! Anyway, on to the pictures!
I built this! I needed to build a large project for my Woods 30 class, and since I didn't need or have room for something like a coffee table or entertainment stand, I decided to build a cat house. I took the design from this house and changed the dimensions. I can't remember how big that house is, but mine in its finished form is 22" at the base, the box is 20", the middle shelf is 19.5", and the top shelf is just short of 20". It's something like 52" tall - I only have a fabric tape measure right now.
It took me WAY too long to finish. My teacher figured I'd be done it in one semester (I started it last September) but it took me the entire school year - I finished the day before my grad! Such a procrastinator/perfectionist.
The box is made out of 3/4" pine plywood. Scratch ignored the cat house until just recently! It stunk of wood finish for a while after I brought it home, but she started using it within the past month and a half. Squee only sat on the very top shelf, but now they both sit on top of the box, and Squee still occasionally goes on the top shelf. She doesn't really use the middle shelf, which was the one that gave me the most grief!
I get lots of questions about the curvy bit. My shop teacher has never bent wood like that before, so we thought about several ways to do it before we settled on the soaking method. The thin part of the curvy part, where the middle hole is cut out, is just two pieces of plywood. I soaked each sheet in water and covered it with soaking pieces of fabric, then sealed it in a couple of garbage bags and let it sit over the weekend.
To get the S shape, I drew out the curve on a piece of particle board, cut it out, and then repeated that two times, until I had three pieces of wood with one straight side and one curved side. I attached those boards to a flat board, curved side up, and that was my mold. Then I took the soaked plywood and clamped it down to the mold, sprayed it with water, and let it sit for a few days. When I unclamped everything, the plywood was then in the curve shape.
The thick parts of the curve are four pieces of hard wood - I can't remember if it's oak or maple or whatever. I get lots of questions about these parts too - I just traced the curve and cut it out on a bandsaw and sanded it out on a belt sander.
The top shelf was supposed to be curved, but since I was running out of time and it seemed tricky, I just stuck with a straight piece. I ended up adding lots of parts that weren't on my original draft, which I have a picture of, but not on the computer. For some reason, I never took any pictures of it while I was building it, but maybe there will be a picture in the yet-to-be-released yearbook!
Yes, they even sit on it together!
I even caught them sitting together a few times!
I built this! I needed to build a large project for my Woods 30 class, and since I didn't need or have room for something like a coffee table or entertainment stand, I decided to build a cat house. I took the design from this house and changed the dimensions. I can't remember how big that house is, but mine in its finished form is 22" at the base, the box is 20", the middle shelf is 19.5", and the top shelf is just short of 20". It's something like 52" tall - I only have a fabric tape measure right now.
It took me WAY too long to finish. My teacher figured I'd be done it in one semester (I started it last September) but it took me the entire school year - I finished the day before my grad! Such a procrastinator/perfectionist.
The box is made out of 3/4" pine plywood. Scratch ignored the cat house until just recently! It stunk of wood finish for a while after I brought it home, but she started using it within the past month and a half. Squee only sat on the very top shelf, but now they both sit on top of the box, and Squee still occasionally goes on the top shelf. She doesn't really use the middle shelf, which was the one that gave me the most grief!
I get lots of questions about the curvy bit. My shop teacher has never bent wood like that before, so we thought about several ways to do it before we settled on the soaking method. The thin part of the curvy part, where the middle hole is cut out, is just two pieces of plywood. I soaked each sheet in water and covered it with soaking pieces of fabric, then sealed it in a couple of garbage bags and let it sit over the weekend.
To get the S shape, I drew out the curve on a piece of particle board, cut it out, and then repeated that two times, until I had three pieces of wood with one straight side and one curved side. I attached those boards to a flat board, curved side up, and that was my mold. Then I took the soaked plywood and clamped it down to the mold, sprayed it with water, and let it sit for a few days. When I unclamped everything, the plywood was then in the curve shape.
The thick parts of the curve are four pieces of hard wood - I can't remember if it's oak or maple or whatever. I get lots of questions about these parts too - I just traced the curve and cut it out on a bandsaw and sanded it out on a belt sander.
The top shelf was supposed to be curved, but since I was running out of time and it seemed tricky, I just stuck with a straight piece. I ended up adding lots of parts that weren't on my original draft, which I have a picture of, but not on the computer. For some reason, I never took any pictures of it while I was building it, but maybe there will be a picture in the yet-to-be-released yearbook!
Yes, they even sit on it together!
I even caught them sitting together a few times!
