armiore aviary...Link to PICS

[cezhart]

I got an old, heavy, oak armiore that had a zillion coats of paint on it & was solid dark brown. I started stripping & then did a faux weathered look & then started adding some little charactors. The quote I've painted at top is... "I go to Nature to be soothes & healed & my sences put in tune once more. By John Burroughs." That's completely true for me.
I want to put glass in the front panels & hardware cloth in the side panels. The open bird area will not be the whole depth of the cabinet. I've got shelves for "bird stuff" down below. I just need to figure out how I'm going to be able to open the doors for storage or clrean the cage without letting the birds out. Any ideas???



Here's a LINK to the pics... http://www.cezannesgarden.com/id355.htm

[zookeeper]

Oh fooey, I can't see your pictures.

[vetbridge]

I can't see the pics either.

In my armoire design that I plan on building, the bottom of the bird area is screen and debris/droppings fall through into the top drawer. My plans assume an armoire like this:

[Hilary]

I'd look at installing doors low and on one (or both) of the sides. Even if the doors reach half way up (so you can reach higher in the armoire) would probably work to keep the birds in. Wish I had room (and the talent) to convert one!

Hilary

[Thalia]

that's it! this summer I'm going garage saling and I'm going to get myself one of those armoirs and convert it! those are just too beautiful not to have one for myself!

[zookeeper]

Thalia, I hope you are ready for ALOT of hard work! It's quite a project to convert furniture to aviary, but well worth all the blood sweat and tears.

As for doors, on mine I made 3 small connected doors on each side, picture below. I can open just one door to change the food & water, or I can open up all 3 and lean in to do a thorough cleaning. It is working out very well for me.

[vetbridge]

zookeeper- nice job! Where does the electrical cord travel after the right front corner of the piece?

[zookeeper]

Ah, the electrical cord! You can't tell in that picture, but it eventually runs up the back and is for the light on top.

Foolish of me to leave a loop of it hanging out like that, with rabbits in the house! (Bunnies like to nibble electrical cords.)

[Thalia]

does anyone have a step by step set of instructions for doing this? My b/f and I were talking about it and he'd like to just build a cage from scratch, but I was thinking that the armoire thing might be easier and nicer looking. I was also considering using the wrought iron stand from our old 55gal fish tank (that exploded) to use as a base for an aviary, since the thing is 5 or 6 feet long. Then building an aviary from scratch on top of it. I have to remember to keep the birds off the floor enough that Hades won't be tempted to get in the aviary. However he's gotten MUCH better, I only holler at him about once every 2 - 3 days now for getting fixated on the birds.
My main goal, being the sneaky thing that I am, is to get the finches a bigger cage so I can put a little hand tame budgie or lovebird or parrotlet in their current cage Of course the boyfriend thinks it's because I want more finches (which isn't untrue). I'm also one of those people that starts small but needs to have the best possible environment for my animals.

[Meagan83]

I found this when I was doing a google search... I thought it was AWESOOOOOOME!!!!!!

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl= ... 0%26um%3D1

[FeatherHarp]

I have seen many people convert hutches and armoires to birds cages and have thought about doing that myself (I mean have Hubby do it...hehe).

I was just looking on Craigslist in the furniture section and there are tons of various sized hutches for sale and at some really great prices.....like as low as $50.00. That would be a cheap way to get one to convert I would think!

[Meagan83]

I have been doing that exact same thing! lol

[cindy]

I recently was looking for a new livingroom sofa and chair, while walking through a large furniture retailer I noticed a clearance scratch and dent section. They had hutch after hutch in there, some of them would have been perfect for such a project.

Tampa has a new IKEA store, the just opened a "as is" section, that is another place to look. Salvation Army has some to. Flea Markets, garage sales also.

Another Idea is to look for old TV/ Entertainment units, Remove the shelving and re-enforce the outer walls and use hardware cloth on the front. Some even have storage underneath.

[CandoAviary]

There are 2 members here that recently did this very thing. here are the post
Janine's
http://finchforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=6095&start=0
Renee's
http://finchforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=6345
They are beautiful and the pull out draw for cleaning is an excellent feature

[Meagan83]

I never tire of looking at pics and different methods of construction.