Jird House Stage 2

Well we managed to get hold of a drill so we've spent the evening working on the next bit of the jird house. It's nearly finished now!

We had got some floating shelves from Homebase last week but the back of the cabinet only had a thin piece of wood - not enough to hold a shelf! We solved the problem by putting some thicker wood strips behind the back of the cabinet to screw into and hold the shelves.

The floating shelves from Homebase and the wood supports

Wooden supports at the back to hold the shelves

Problem number one - we accidentally screwed the bracket in upside down. The whole thing had to be unscrewed and turned over!

First bracket in place

Problem number two - we couldn't get the shelf in behind the glass to slide it onto the bracket! Luckily the top of the cabinet was easy to unscrew and lift off so we could take the glass out.

Problem number three - we managed to put the bracket of the small shelf in a lot more easily, and made sure it was the right way round. The shelf went easily onto the bracket as the glass was already out. No more problems we thought. Wrong! The space between the two shelves was too small to fit the screwdriver into, and we needed to put screws into the bottom of the shelf to fix it to the bracket. After some grumbling we took out the bottom shelf, screwed in the top shelf, then put the bottom shelf back!

First shelf fitted and second bracket put in

Problem number four - we put the glass back, screwed the top of the cabinet back down, then realised the glass was in the wrong way round! By this point we thought we'd just leave it, maybe sort it out later in the week when we're not feeling annoyed!

Despite all the problems the house was looking pretty good by now. The final thing we did this evening was to drill ventilation holes in the back of the cabinet.

Shelves in place (eventually!) and ventilation holes drilled

The next jobs will be to fit the wooden ladders, put the bedding in the bottom, add all the toilet roll tubes I've saved up and fill up the food and water. Oh, and change the glass back round! Once we've done that it will all be ready for the jirds arrival.

Some toys added to see what they look like!

Jird house nearly finished!