It's a Zoo in Here

As I've mentioned before, we have a numerous amount of stuffed animals. It was getting a little wild here with lions and tigers and bears. Oh my.

To solve this, I decided to cage the mayhem, by building a stuffy zoo.
Check out my inspiration here.

It looked easy enough! Famous last words....

I started with the 1/2" dowels as the bars. Easy enough. But why do they have to put those stupid stickers on them? They never peal off! So after I half pealed one off, as shown below, I said, "Later." And that's another project in itself to finish in a few months or years.

This is possibly the biggest annoyance of mine.

So I started chopping the base pieces, but I wanted them with a 45 degree cut, so I got Adam to help me with that. I'm still new to using all these power tools and it just scared me a little. But I held the umbrella for him as it started to sprinkle, so I still helped!

Base and/ or upper section complete

Then I assembled the base and upper part of the "cage". Back on to the power tools!

So smart. Wish I thought of it myself, but no.

To help me know how far to drill the holes for the "cage cars", I used Adam's trick of taping it and drilling to that point. He's so smart! It's much more precise than eye-balling it.

It definitely came together once I got the holes drilled. That actually took the longest, but only because the drill died and I had to go back downstairs every half an hour to drill three more holes.

A little math practice here-
five dowels times two holes each= ten holes at two- three per hour= a lot of time.

After some serious sanding to hide some of my not so epic connections, it was coming together. It also made it less sharp and just looked much nicer.

Then I popped in the dowels or "cage bars" and it became an almost completed zoo!

Of course, our local* hardware store only had 5 of the 1/2" dowels in stock, so I bought them all, figuring I could rig something else up, but I'll have to go to the other hardware store for three more for the backside of the zoo. I will have to buy some wood glue too, and glue the dowels into the holes. I came down with a flu so that still hasn't happened quite yet.

*I always try to shop local when possible, but sometimes it's ridiculous.

Anyways, we don't want any bears escaping!

So, it is almost done, but for two reasons I have not finished.

Firstly, the flu had be convinced I was dying, so it became low on my priorities.

Secondly, I wanted some reader input into what color I should paint the zoo. I want to hear what you think it should be!

Thanks for reading! Hope you are having a happy Monday!

Jena xo

Tiny Train Reversible Cushion design by Ferm Living - $70.00
from: Burke Decor LLC