Ella's New House

This is a very unnecessary but fun project…I’m building the cat a little house. For the past 3 years, this cardboard box that I turned into a ‘bunker’ has been sitting in our front room. The cat loves it and hides in there all the time, so we have been unwilling to throw it out.

Then I saw this cool cardboard cat house online, made of hexagons and square pieces. The angles are a little complicated, a hexagon is all 120 degree angles, but I wasn’t sure what the angle where the hexagons and squares met was. So I built a 3D model out of cardboard and I’m very glad I did. All the angles turned out to be 120 degrees…but with 9” sides on the hexagons, the structure was way too big…about 24” high.

Ultimately I decided to scale it down to 7” sides on the hexagons. Using ¼” plywood I started tracing my pieces and cutting them out with angled edges so they but together nicely. To strengthen the joints (and have something to nail into) I cut 1x1x5.5” strips of pine with a 120 degree on one side. 

I managed to assemble 75% of it before running out of nails and time. I am trying to decide what shape to cut the opening as; it will be in the middle of one of the hexagons. The model online had it shaped like a cat head but alternately I was thinking of a circle for flexibility (if the cat didn’t like jumping the 6” to get it, I could just rotate the structure so the entry hexagon was closer to the ground)

And now we know: the cat is already using the cardboard one so Tom thought I should just keep that instead of re-building with wood…but never minding how huge it is, it will get grotty again.

Building the Powder Room Vanity

This weekend I knocked out the entire vanity construction! It’s a pretty simple design, a floating box with slab doors that will get screwed to the wall. To start I constructed the box part out of ¾” pine boards. Then I cut the doors and drilled out the holes for the hinges. 

From there I filled holes, sanding it all down and gave it a coat of oil based primer. This will hopefully stop bleed through from the knots in the pine. I plan to paint it a navy blue, but will do that once it is installed.

And now we know: this was a simple construction; it is really fast to build something so minimalist. Also don’t prime outside when trees are dropping a ton of leafy stuff. It will get stuck in your paint.