Project #1
Ultimate Poop Room
One of my life goals this year is to start and complete five projects, and I can already mark one off of my list.A little back story before the details of this project.
A little over two years ago I adopted a beautiful Calico kitten that I named Jinxx after a member of a band that was helping me get through a tough jam. In September my fiancee (now wife) adopted a 11 week old grey and brown tabby from the shelter that we started fostering for; the shelter had named him Friday, because that was the day he was dropped off. We took him in on Saturday as our first foster kitten, and we fell in love with him, and so did Jinxx.
When we moved into our new home at the base of the stairs for the basement there is an extra closet so we decided to turn it into a place for the litter boxes. It made sense there, they were out of the way and not in a place that is regularly lived in; because of the smell, we didn't want them upstairs.
After adopting Friday we took in six new foster kittens, and learned fast that two litter boxes was not enough when there are more than two cats in the house. We brainstormed all kinds of things to solve this issue, we knew that we needed more litter boxes but our issue was we didn't want to see them or smell them. Finally, M (my wife) had a great idea to turn our current litter closet into a tiered closet to house more that one litter box.
I'm going to post before and after pictures, and information on what all went on. We are both super proud of our accomplishments, and being able to do it ourselves without a man's help.
We are strong, independent women!
We went to Home Depot and collected our supplies Friday night , which was definitely a good thing since we got snowed in Saturday.
Before:
Before we could get started, we cleaned everything out of the closet, scooped the litter boxes, took off the door, and took down the existing shelf and rod. We made a slightly big mistake that decided to use our power tools in the house; we didn't take into account that mess and the sound they would cause, but we made it work.
We were lucky that we were able to have the shelves cut down to length at Home Depot, but when we got into the project and went to put the shelf into the closet we found that who ever either built or re-did it made it two different sizes in the front and back, so it was more of a trapezoid shape instead of a rectangle. That made it where we not only needed to cut the hole in the board but we also needed to shave off a corner of the board to make it fit.
We started out with the bottom shelf; it took us about 45 minutes to figure out where to place the brackets, cut the hole, shave off the corner and get it attached. After getting the details all worked out, the second shelf was easy to get ready, but then we hit a snag, neither of us could get it in because of the bottom shelf was in the way. We took out the shelf, and we were able to get the other two up without any problems!
After:
We added these awesome and cute cat holes to the door so that we were able to close off the closet to reduce the sound of scratching, the smell, and so that they could not be seen. We also added the same thing to the door into the main part of the basement, so that when I was working in the basement and watching TV I can close the door, but the cats could still get in and out.
Supplies:
Kitty Pass Cat Door (Amazon: $34.95) x220"x13" Heavy Duty Shelf Bracket (Home Depot: $10.98) x6
0.75"x23.75"x56" White Melamine Shelf Board (Home Depot: $14.98) x3
StudSensor HD25 Stud Finder (Home Depot: $10.97) x1
#9 2.5" Star Flat-head Wood Screws- 1lb. (Home Depot: $6.97) x1box
#10 0.75" Philips Flat Head Zinc Plated Wood Screw 100pack (Home Depot: $5.78) x1
Tools:
JigsawDrill
Drill Bits: 3/8", 9/64", 1/8"
Philips Screw Driver Bit
Star Screw Driver Bit
Philips Screw Driver (Hand held)
Flathead Screw Driver (Hand held)
80 Grit Coarse Sandpaper
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